‘The Challenge’: Johnny ‘Bananas’ Devenanzio Reflects On His Win And Future On The MTV Series

MTV’s The Challenge: Total Madness has come to an end, and Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio is the male winner of Season 35. During Wednesday’s episode, the reality star took home his seventh win, and he’s reflecting on his journey to victory and his future on the popular competition series, according to report from Entertainment Weekly.

The July 15 episode kicked off with nine remaining players, including Bananas and Jenny West, who took home the crown as this season’s female winner, as previously reported by The Inquisitr.

The final challenge took place over a two-day period and consisted of several checkpoints. After the first checkpoint, it was announced that one man and one woman would be eliminated. Bananas ended up being voted into the elimination against Rogan O’Connor, but he managed to pull off the win — which knocked Rogan out of the game. He then went on to Day 2, where he dominated the other male players to become the newest Challenge winner.

While chatting with EW, Bananas said this was a special victory for him and that it truly felt like he had broken some kind of curse after a six-season losing streak.

“Out of all of the victories that I’ve had, this one, hands down, not just because of the road that I had to navigate this season but just the culmination of the pressure and the close calls and the near victories and the heartbreaking defeats that I’ve had over the past six seasons, it was just that much sweeter,” he said.

“Everything this season in conjunction with everything else just really made this one special.”

When asked if he’ll be returning for the recently announced Season 36, Bananas pointed out that he has already done 20 out of the 23 seasons of the series. He said many people assumed that this would have been his final act, but that’s just not the case for the 38-year-old.

“The odds are pretty good that you’re going to see me back,” he said. “I’m going to ride this one till the wheels fall off.”

Bananas went on to comment on the situation with former MTV star Dee Nguyen. As fans of the series know, Dee was fired from the network after tweeting racially insensitive comments about the Black Lives Matter movement following the death of George Floyd. The network made the decision to edit Dee out of the remaining episodes of Season 35, which caused fans to miss quite a bit of the storyline. Bananas said it was unfortunate that viewers didn’t get to see “Dee’s demise” as there was a lot of drama between her and Jenny at the end.

Speaking of drama, the Challenge winner also touched on his own rivalry with Sarah Rice. During Rivals III, Bananas and Sarah teamed up to win the final challenge. In the end, he was asked if he wanted to share the prize money with his partner or take the winnings for himself. Bananas shocked everyone, including Sarah, when he decided to keep the total $275,000 prize to himself.

Despite the backlash he faced for his decision, Bananas said he had no regrets.