Warning: this article contains spoilers for ‘The Challenge: USA’ season 2, episode 4.
The Amazing Race star Luis Colón recently sounded off about his Challenge USA co-star, Josh Martinez.
Luis and Josh joined 22 other reality television stars for the second season of CBS’s take on The Challenge — the long-running MTV competition franchise. They were selected to compete on different teams, and thanks in large part to Josh, Luis is no longer in the running for a share of $500,000.
In episode 3, Josh made it clear he was targeting Luis (and Survivor 35’s Desi Williams) to be thrown into “The Arena,” USA 2’s elimination grounds. “Desi, I’m coming after you,” the Big Brother 19 winner said in a rant early in the episode. “Louis, I’m coming after you. That’s where the f*** I’m at.”
Josh’s Red team ultimately earned power by winning the daily challenge. And when it was time for Red to nominate a man and woman to contend in The Arena, Josh was steadfast in saying Desi and Luis’ names in an effort to protect his alliance.
And as the episode showed, Josh’s unwillingness to take no for an answer led to both players taking a trip into the sand. Luis eventually faced off against Survivor 38’s Chris Underwood in “Evil Eye,” a physical elimination match that had them wrestling a disk out of each other’s hands.
After a grueling match, Chris walked away with the win and sent Luis packing.
Luis spoke with Gold Derby in an interview posted on Aug. 21. And in it, Luis shared that he thought his relationship with Josh was much stronger going into the game, considering they had met before at an Amazing Race watch party and are both from Miami, Florida.
The Amazing Race 34 alum said he was open to aligning with Josh at the start of the game, but knew all bets were off after Josh didn’t support him in the first episode when he narrowly missed going into The Arena.
“We’re not the best of friends, but we were really cool,” Luis said. “I admired how humble he was. When we got onto the show I told him, ‘Hey, I’m ready to work with you.’ I thought he was going to work with me. He didn’t help me out that first week of eliminations.
“He never spoke game with me. I picked the other side of the house, I picked going against him. He didn’t like that and I’m not sure why he doesn’t understand that.”
Luis also felt slighted by Dusty Harris, his fellow Amazing Race alum
With a house filled with Survivor, Big Brother, and The Challenge competitors, Luis entered USA 2 alongside Dusty Harris as the only two players representing The Amazing Race. But, that didn’t mean Dusty was completely ready to stick his neck out for Luis.
During the Red team’s deliberation, Dusty elected to toss a vote at Big Brother 24’s runner-up Monte Taylor instead of Luis. But, the episode didn’t show Dusty go to bat for Luis. Instead, he burned his vote on Monte, which solidified his Amazing Race counterpart’s fate, and Luis took note of that.
“I asked him, ‘Dusty, what happened?’” Luis said while speaking with the outlet. “And he’s like, ‘Look, I tried to protect you.’ Chanelle [Howell] was sitting across the table and she goes, ‘That’s bulls***. You could’ve saved him.’ Dusty was my number one guy and I would have had his back for anything. Basically, he didn’t have mine.”
The Red and Blue teams worked together during the daily challenge to overtake Luis’ Green team
Josh and Dusty aren’t the only reasons Luis’ time on USA 2 was cut short. Episode 3 featured “Sideswiped,” a daily challenge that forced players to swing from semi-truck to semi-truck while attempting to stick disks into their respective colored spots.
The Blue team chose to derail Green’s momentum toward winning the day in favor of Red notching their first victory. Specifically, Blue’s Johnny Bananas and Tori Deal focused on mitigating the number of points Green’s Monte and Michaela Bradshaw scored. Their plan worked and that’s how Red triumphed.
Well, according to Luis, Green wasn’t surprised that their opponents joined forces.
“We knew since Episode 1 that they were coming after us,” Luis said. “We had the best team. The women on our team were the reason why we were so good. Desi [Williams] and Michaela [Bradshaw], those girls are badasses. That was the only way that they would have won was to [gang] up on us.”
Once the dust settled at the end of the episode, Green’s Luis and Amanda Garcia were sent home via a double elimination, and arguably their strongest female, Desi, defected to the Blue team after beating Amanda. She chose to send Big Brother 24’s Alyssa Snider to Green in her stead.
The next episode airs on Wednesday, Aug. 23, via CBS and Paramount Plus at 10 p.m. ET.
Published: Aug 21, 2023 11:47 pm