‘The Challenge’: Ed Shares His Biggest Regret From Season 39

For much of The Challenge: Battle for a New Champion, Ed Eason positioned himself as one of the top contenders. Unfortunately for The Circle alum, “Conquest” got the better of him and he was purged from the game in the Jan. 31 episode. Following his elimination from the game, Ed spoke with PopCulture.com and shared his biggest regret from the season. 

While Ed was excelling at missions throughout the season, the latest daily challenge, “End of the Line” got the best of him. As he explained, he didn’t make a “game-time decision” to go for the win and got tripped up. Rather, it was a simple mistake that led to him being purged from the game. He said, “This one, I’m not going to blame it on the equipment, but I will say I must’ve had too many beers that night, and then my tummy was big. I leaned forward and somehow hit the button on the mechanism to drop me off the rope … I was just kind of looking down to see how much rope [was] below me, and before you know it, boom, I smacked the water. I was like, ‘What?’ I had no words. I was just like, ‘Wow, that’s how I’m going out. That’s it. No redos.’”

After this purge, Ed was left wondering what could have been when it came to his game on season 39, particularly after his elimination came one week after he made a major decision. During the previous week, he won the daily challenge, “Dark Tide,” and had to choose whether to stay loyal to the alliance that he was working with from the beginning or switch over to work with Horacio Gutierrez and Kyland Young’s coalition. Ultimately, he chose to stay loyal. But the decision, and his gameplay throughout the season, do weigh heavily on his mind. 

“I wish I kind of would’ve done more of my decision-making rather than [the] team’s decision-making throughout the whole thing,” he said. Ed went on to note that the decision to save Emanuel Neagu after the daily challenge was one that he is steadfast in. The reality star added, “Everybody was trying to give me the plan. I had 20 different plans coming in. Oh, you got to save this person, then they’ll save this person. And I was just like, ‘No, no. I know the one person I’m saving. That’s it. From there, you guys do with that what you will.’ So I think a couple people could kind of guess. I was just very close with Emanuel, so I wanted to save him especially because we were both under the gun, the nomination before where we both got voted in.”

Even though this was a decision he knew that he wanted to make, there were other times during the season when he wished that he would have taken the reins a bit more instead of leaving things up to others. He explained, “My thing is I wish I would have taken more of a solo wolf route from the beginning instead of being so loyal from day one and never wavering, where it’s like, I wish I would’ve done more of what I wanted to for me rather than what I do for everyone else. So that’s my, I think, only regret.”

The Challenge: Battle for a New Champion airs on Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET on MTV. Stay tuned to PopCulture.com for Challenge coverage all throughout Season 39.