'The Challenge USA': Monte Talks 'Grueling' Elimination and Returning With a 'Vengeance' (Exclusive)

This season of The Challenge USA featured one of the most labor-intensive eliminations to date. Unfortunately, for Monte Taylor, he had to face the daunting elimination task against his ally, Tyler Crispen. After three painstaking hours of both men attempting to re-create a pyramid of balls on top of a spinning spool, Tyler ended up with the win and Monte was subsequently eliminated. 

Following his time on The Challenge USA, Monte spoke with PopCulture.com and spilled some major tea on that elimination, his gameplay, and so much more. Read on to see what the Big Brother 24 alum had to say about his second turn on TV. (This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)

PopCulture.com: Monte, that elimination. If there's one elimination on this show that I would not want to do, I think it would've been that one. How did you manage to keep yourself going? 

Monte: I mean, I talked to Tyler. We both still have bruises from the strap that was holding us to that cable. I mean, it was long and grueling. But yeah, it required a lot of patience, a lot of persistence. The cool part about it was that Tyler and I had opportunities to talk to each other and encourage each other throughout the whole thing because at some point, honestly, I think both of us just wanted one of us to finish. It wasn't a matter of I want to win versus ... I was like, please, somebody get this damn pyramid to stay still and hit that red button. So, it was grueling.

PC: Was there anything that we didn't see during that elimination? Because I know three hours is a crazy amount of time, probably one of the longest eliminations ever that we've seen here. So what can you tell us about what actually happened during that span of time?

Monte: So, I think what you guys saw was probably the best way that they can try to condense it. But I'll also say, I mean, Tyler and myself probably got a full pyramid each individually at least four or five times. So we got a handle on the whole elimination. But once you started trying to reach back at that red button, things started herking and jerking and then it would topple over. There was one point I got really close. Tyler had gotten really close beforehand a bunch of times too.

I will say though, and I'm sure he's going to have an opportunity to talk about it, but Tyler did figure out that if you remove as much sand as possible from that top of the spool where you're stacking the balls, that actually created more friction between them and held them together. I was putting sand on it because I thought that that would help, but apparently it made them a lot more slippery and easier for them to topple over. So he figured out the right strategy to actually maintain a pyramid, so he gets a lot of credit for that.

PC: I did want to lead into a little bit of what took place before this elimination here because I wanted to know from you, was there ever a consideration that you wanted to make this elimination a girl's elimination? Because I know Alyssa's your friend and Tyler was very vocal about wanting it to be a guy's elimination. But, that really did put you in the line of fire because there were only so many options. 

Monte: No. I think me and Tyler were on the same page. And honestly, I respected Tyler's decision there. He had pretty much made it clear once he saw his name and Alyssa's name up for nomination, he was like, "I want to go up against whoever it is that you guys put up because I don't want Alyssa to be in the crossfires." 

Yeah, that did put more of a risk of me going in. But at that point, we realized it's really The Challenge vets that we were trying to pull in as much as possible. The Survivor folks, we kind of knew that whatever they were going to do was what they were going to do. We had tried our tricks and whatnot. We tried Big Brothering it, politicking, and going that. Hey, what if you vote for this person instead? We tried as much as we could, but there was no changing their opinion. But, we did manage to get most of The Challenge folks. Wes couldn't help himself. He just had to vote for Cassidy. But outside of that, we got everybody on the same page putting Sebastian's ball in there. So I think we did the best that we possibly could socially in that moment to decrease the chances of me going down. But when you got seven balls, you got seven balls.

PC: And then of course, we also saw Chris, and you and Tyler had a little bit of tension there. Y'all were so cool, calm and collected, I loved it, in that interaction. But I know he went to the green team, and teams are over. But was there any lingering tension there with Chris and y'all two? Anything like that?

Monte: No, no, no. I mean, first of all, that was the heat of the moment. Whenever you win one of these eliminations ... If I would've won this elimination, I don't know how I would've ... I would've been a mess. I probably would've came back screaming, talking about Survivor this, Survivor that. It would've been a problem. You wouldn't have seen the same polished version of Monte that you would normally see. So I think him coming back from that elimination, he's on top of the world and highly emotionally charged. And even after he said what he said, we were all laughing about it. In that moment we're just like, "Chris, what are you doing right now, bro? Come on. We can't take you seriously."

PC: I did want to ask too, TJ at the end there was very vocal about he did want to see you back. So I wanted to know from you, would you come back for another season? Would you come back for even maybe the MTV version? Anything like that?

Monte: Well, I would definitely come back if there was an opportunity to do The Challenge USA season three, 100%. MTV is a little bit of a different animal just because of the logistics behind it, the filming period and all that sort of stuff. But my experience filming for The Challenge USA, all I have to compare it to is Big Brother, which is, I mean, just far and beyond traumatizing because as a person in a house stuck for 95 days, oh my God, it was crazy. So being in The Challenge house was so refreshing. You see production. You can chill and go outside and do things on your own will a lot more. So I would definitely do it again. 

But I also feel like I got some vengeance I need to exercise. I need to come back, not only with more connections than I did with this first time, but also physically more prepared. Now that I know what these challenges are about, my training style and all that, I'm definitely going to get into some water a lot more. So it's just going to be a different beast. I would love to have the opportunity.

PC: Vengeance on anyone in particular?

Monte: No. Vengeance, it's more of a personal, it's a me versus me sort of thing. Well, I mean, the Survivor group, if some of those folks are back again who were specifically targeting me, I think I might exercise a little bit of vengeance. But at the same time, I say that now and then I find out some people are on there, we might be working together. It depends on the dynamics of the game. But if I could, that would be a nice thing to do.

The Challenge USA airs on Thursday nights at 10 p.m. ET on CBS. All episodes of Season 2 are available to watch on Paramount+ a day after they air.