Warning: Do not continue reading if you haven’t watched the Tuesday, June 19, finale of Champs vs. Stars.
Is it possible for a star to win a champs’ game? It doesn’t seem like it! Chris “C.T.” Tamburello and Tony Raines took home the win on the finale of Champs vs. Stars, with Casper Smart and Louise Hazel coming in second and Wes Bergmann and Daniel “Booby” Gibson landing in third.
“I felt like a kid again,” Tony, 30, says of the moment he knew he had won. “As soon as that puzzle was done, I felt like I was 5 years old again. CT was like, ‘We haven’t won yet, we have to get the last disc!’ The last time I felt so excited like that was when T.J. [Lavin] announced I was in the final for Vendettas. This was the best thing yet.”
Tony also was thrilled that “Team Dad Bods” triumphed – Tony has two daughters, Harper, 2, and Isla, 17 months, and C.T. has a 2-year-old son.
“We needed to pull that out. I know CT was saying he wanted to win that thing for me and thought I deserved it, but it was hard. Going in, we weren’t the force I thought we were going to be,” Tony explains. “A lot of it was me not stepping up to the plate and depending on CT. It looked like Team Dad wasn’t going to pull it out. Then the eating part came and it was a happy ending.”
Tony also thinks this win is just another sign that the newer guys should take over The Challenge from the older vets. “It’s time for us to step out of the shadows and stop being intimidated by them just because they’ve got so many seasons under their belt,” Tony said. “You’ve gotta make some waves, because we’re letting these guys stick around way too long. We just have to start taking advantage of that and sticking together and also training. We don’t need to come in thinking it’s easy.”
As for how much longer he’ll be doing the show, Tony used to say once he hit 30, he’d be done. But he’s not quite there … yet. “I won Champs vs. Stars when I was 29. I plan on doing another Challenge, we’ll see if I still got it. I’ve got one more season and then I’m done? I don’t know,” he told Us.
The Challenge: Final Reckoning premieres on MTV Tuesday, July 10, at 9 p.m. ET.
