Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio has been on The Challenge for a very long time, but in Season 41, Episode 4, a simple mistake ended his game early. A bad call during Sudoku and some miscommunication with his partner, Leka, led them to place last. This sent him into a tough elimination that he couldn’t survive.
Here’s what Johnny had to say about the elimination and what upset him the most.
Johnny Bananas says the elimination round in The Challenge ‘was tailor-made’ for Gabe
In Season 41, Episode 4 of The Challenge, Johnny Bananas was eliminated in a round he couldn’t win. During his interview with Entertainment Weekly, he explained how a series of mistakes led to his exit.
Bananas said he and his partner, Leka, made early mistakes in the Sudoku puzzle. They ran out of time, which landed them in last place.
Bananas explained, “I kept reiterating the fact that I don’t know much about Sudoku, but I do know that if you make a mistake early on, the entire rest of your board is built on that mistake, and it’s basically all wrong. I thought we should have cleared it a lot sooner than we did. Leka disagreed — she thought she’d be able to fix the mistakes. We weren’t able to do that, and by the time she finally agreed to take it down, it was too late.”
This mistake sent Bananas into elimination against rookie Gabe Wai, where he lost badly.
Talking about the elimination, he said, “What they didn’t show was there were a few times I let him pull me through the sand. I just sat there and let him yank me through because I thought, ‘If this guy drags me enough times, it’s going to wear him out.’ And we all saw that wasn’t the case. That guy’s a monster. That elimination was tailor-made for somebody of his stature. There was nothing I could do about it. That’s the thing about eliminations — you never really know what you’re going to walk into. It just wasn’t my day.”
Despite everything, Bananas doesn’t blame anyone else. He said, “Even though I once again had the entire house against me, the one thing I’m happy about is I went out this season with nobody to blame but myself.”
