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The Challenge’s Paulie Calafiore on That Hook Up, the Mercenaries and Shane’s Strategy (Exclusive)

Paulie Recaps The Challenge
Paulie on 'The Challenge'.MTV

Former Big Brother alum and The Challenge: Final Reckoning cast member Paul Calafiore will be blogging exclusive with Us Weekly each week, sharing his opinion and what really went down.

Well, well, well … Here I am minding my own business trying to stay out of all these high school Challenge 32 twitter beefs but it looks like Us Weekly has different plans for me. So it looks like your new favorite challenger, who you love so much, has his own weekly recap for all of you to tweet about! Wait – is it love? Or love to hate? Either way … go f—k yourself, because I’m serving up these recaps the only way I know how too: long, hard, and raw, just like my sex life. For those of you who are easily offended, I’ll do my best to keep the F-bombs to a minimum. Let’s begin.

Related: All Your Challenge Questions Answered

So, after Kam attracted mercenaries yet again and they did their stereotypical slow motion walk out amidst everyone screaming, the stereotypical interviews followed, which included everyone saying how badass Ashley and Hunter are. I must admit, the editing gets me amped up no matter what. As a long time viewer of the show, I’ll also admit that TJ Lavin adding the twist of the mercenaries entering the game is f—king epic.

Paulie Recaps The Challenge
MTV

Ashley and Hunter won their way into the house while Angela and Faith were sent to redemption. What I learned from this is that Ashley can’t punch for s—t but will do whatever it takes to win including putting her head through a wall. I love a competitor willing to sacrifice their body for the win – something Hunter is all too familiar with, although he made it look like that broken wrist was a thing of the past with how he was crushing through those walls. I have to give HUGE props to my girls Angela and Faith because they did give Ashley and Hunter a run for their money and had Faith not gassed out, I would have been seeing the mercenaries at the redemption house instead. Side note: Damn Angela, I see you with those punches.

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We also have to talk about about Ashley and Kyle f—king … if that’s what you want to call it. It speaks for itself when the girl doesn’t even want to tell anybody about it the next day. Don’t worry Kyle, the hens didn’t need their ear plugs for that one.

Paulie Recaps The Challenge
Kyle on ‘The Challenge’. MTV

Next up, we took a trip to the vineyard where a couple comments exchanged back and forth between Johnny and Cara turned into a whole episode on the bus ride back and lead into the house as well. Here’s my two cents on the matter from a third-party perspective who can now see it from a viewer standpoint and a challenger standpoint: People come at Tom Brady all the time because he will go down as the greatest quarterback of all time. How often do you hear him complain about people coming after him or rookies talking s—t to him? Never. Reason being: Tom Brady only focuses on winning and doing everything it takes to make sure he and his team are able to do so.

Therefore, as much as I want to feel bad for Johnny, I really can’t because he is a solid competitor with a solid team. This game is cut throat and there’s no use complaining about it. Either do what it takes to stay at the top or leave the game. Younger and hungrier competitors coming in is nothing new when it comes to sports or competition, so you would think that someone who speaks about “athletes” and “competition” so much would understand that fact more than anyone yet he only understands it when it doesn’t apply to him. Maybe if the vets didn’t go after the rookies all the time then they wouldn’t be forced to bond together and form these groups to protect themselves.

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All of that being said, I think it’s safe to say where I stand on the challenge that we finish the episode on. Although I completely see the strategic aspect of the move made by Shane, the competitor in me would not have allowed myself to throw the challenge especially when the teams were so evenly matched. At this point, with the private voting, the numbers were in his favor. They were also a powerhouse team so the likelihood of them actually being voted in would have been close, but would not have happened. Teams were voting to make sure their boxes didn’t light up and nobody wanted to go against Shane and Nelson in elimination at that point. It’s only fair that the rest of the team minus Sylvia (who was in on the sabotage) was upset at the move. Shane drew a line in the sand and was not afraid to let everyone know it.

Here’s to pissing people off and giving zero f—ks about doing so.

The Challenge: Final Reckoning airs on MTV Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET.

For more TV news and exclusive interviews, subscribe to the “Watch With Us” podcast.

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