Hall Brawl is back, and it’s claimed its first set of victims on The Challenge 40: Battle of the Eras. On Wednesday’s (August 21) episode, almost half of the contestants across all four eras had to go into the arena to duke it out for the chance to stay in the castle. And while there were three other games in play — Pole Wrestle, Balls In, and Give Me Shelter — the group to draw the most fearsome elimination type was the one that’s probably the least familiar with that format: Era 4.
From the youngest generation of vets, Theo Campbell and Nurys Mateo were automatically sent into the ring after they each placed last in the daily challenge, and things got pretty dramatic when it came to the vote-in. While Nurys hand-picked her opponent — opting for Olivia Kaiser, with whom she’d had some bad blood coming in — Paulie Calafiore threw his own proverbial hat into the ring in order to settle an old score with Theo.
After a pretty epic — and nerve-gnashing — pair of showdowns, Paulie and Nurys were sent packing.
TV Insider caught up with Paulie and Nurys to find out how they really felt about bringing their feuds into the arena and what we didn’t see in the episode.
You guys got to do Hall Brawl, which has been missing for a long time. What was going through your mind when you first got that opportunity?
Nurys Mateo: I was scared. I absolutely was scared. I always told myself coming into this show out of all the millions of eliminations that I could do, I never wanted to do a Hall Brawl unless I was going up against someone that was physically my stature, and that’s not what I got. So, yeah, I was definitely terrified, especially after Theo and Paulie went before us, and we had to go after them. I was terrified watching that carnage.
Paulie Calafiore: Yeah, I mean, usually when you call out the biggest guy in the house, you wanted to be something physical but not in the Hall Brawl. So when we picked the Hall Brawl thing, I was like, “Yeah, this might hurt regardless of the outcome.”
Was there any one that you were hoping you guys would draw?
Paulie: I mean, I wanted either a Pole Wrestle or Balls In, so I could actually use any of my soccer skills, wrestling skills, jiu-jitsu skills. I feel like Give Me Shelter would have just been [underwhelming] after everything Theo and I have been through. So one of those two I think would have given the fans what they wanted — but also saved my head from the concussions.
Nurys: I completely agree. I think my endurance is pretty good. I think a Balls In would have been exciting for me because I’ve already done a Pole Wrestle. So I definitely wanted that or I’ll take the Pole Wrestle because I have the experience of already doing one before. So I think those ones would have been more exciting for me. And of course, I got the opposite of what I wanted. I blame you, Paulie.
Paulie: I’m sorry for manifesting.
Nurys: They were standing beside me and Olivia hoping and praying for a Hall Brawl. Me and Olivia are shaking like, “Please, no, please.”
Paulie: Honestly, I like I got nervous when Pole Wrestle went first. I was hoping that Give Me Shelter went first or Hall Brawl went first, and I would have been like, “Yes!” But after everything, I picked. I was like, “All right, well, now we got a 50/50 shot of either doing Balls In or Hall Brawl,” And yeah, I definitely manifested that. So my bad there.
Last season, Nurys you were kind of an elimination queen. So were you nervous because of the people that were in your era this time? Because even before you guys drew the Hall Brawl, you seemed like you were telling Horacio you didn’t know if you could win.
Nurys: Well, I will say I kind of went into it like I always kind of go into these things: expecting the worst. So because I had that mindset, I kind of told myself that there was no way that the challenges were not gonna give us anything but something physical. I knew this is like the iconic Season 40. If I was a producer myself, I would want to start the season off with a bang. So I just took every other possibility of any other elimination being there, and I just knew that I just told myself, “It’s gonna be something physical, so prepare for that.” So, yeah, I was terrified because of my options for women because I just knew it in my heart it was gonna be something physical and I also had a feeling it was gonna be a Hall Brawl. I manifested my first-ever Pole Wrestle.
Paulie: I manifested that, too.
Nurys: I told the girls, I was like, “Tonight, I’m doing a Pole Wrestle.” When we got there, there was a Pole Wrestle. So I kind of just told myself that’s what I was gonna do, and I was not excited about it in any way, shape, or form because I also went into the season a bit smaller. I was about 110 pounds. I’m like 123 at the moment. So I was also a lot smaller than what I am now. So I also was nervous for myself for that.
Paulie: We were on that Vietnam diet.
Nurys: Well, the food I will say out of the three countries I’ve been to now, I will say Vietnam was probably one of the better foods that I’ve got.
Paulie: No, I loved the food. I’m talking about like just the outside. You could sit outside and not work out and it was a sauna and you were gonna lose weight.
Nurys: Yeah, 100 percent.
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So Paulie, you said you’ve watched it back now. I remember when you were doing your exit speech, you said you were dreading watching it. What was your reaction? And was that crunch really that loud in real life?
Paulie: I don’t know, Nurys, Did it sound that loud in real life?
Nurys: I think it did. It did. Do you see when it pans over to me and Olivia’s faces, we’re terrified. Like, we’re actually like, you see the terror in my face where I’m like, “I have to go now.” I just remember obviously and then I was Paulie after the fact. So maybe the crunch didn’t sound as bad in real life, but also just being with you and seeing how upset and hurt you were…
Paulie: I think that also adds a different element to watching it back and seeing everything. I’m like, “Maybe it was that bad.” I don’t know. I’m gonna be honest, I don’t really remember much because I got two concussions back-to-back in, in both of my things and when you’re in the moment, you don’t hear anything. It’s just adrenaline, carnage, all that stuff.
So I think like the helmets that we had had no face protection, right? So, you’re almost going in and like turning in order to avoid like a knee to the face or anything to the face that could absolutely bust up your nose, your cheekbone, your eye socket. So I didn’t expect Theo to get that low. But the fact that he got low, the second that my vision went white, I knew that he got low enough to go head to head and I was like, “Damn, that was really the only thing that I didn’t want to happen. I needed to be able to hit him in the waist in order to stop his size and power.” But yeah, if he got as low as I did, I knew it was kind of lights out.
For both of you, in this elimination, you both faced off against people that you had a lot of history with and a lot of built-in kind of animosity. How does that change the calculus when you come into the season with a rival like that?
Nurys: I mean, I guess this is my first time going in with someone that I had drama with, but I think I didn’t get to experience it I guess the way that your normal rivalry could because we were on the same team. So the moment we get there, and the moment that we find out that this is my era. This is someone that I’m gonna have to work with. I didn’t expect to go home so early. I was expecting to make it to the end. So for that sake, and for the sake of my own mental health, I knew I didn’t want to continue the rivalry. I wanted to let bygones be bygones, and I wanted to just accept her apology and move forward because I wanted the best thing for our era.
I wanted to, especially after being on Season 39 where everyone called us losers, I wanted to prove to the fandom and everybody else that was there that we deserve to be here just as much as you guys. And I refused to let mine and Olivia’s drama be the downfall of our era to not prove to you guys that we are the best and we are gonna do a great job of moving forward and being the faces of this show. So I wasn’t gonna continue the drama at all. I wanted to just let it go and kick some ass.
Paulie: Yeah, I think on my end, I think we wanted to keep the team strong and Theo and I had some conversations of like, “When are we going to do this? We know it’s coming.” And I think what riled me up was we were trying to keep our team the strongest, and I feel like there were other options on the table other than me that would have kept the team the strongest. So when I heard that he was asking for me, it insulted me.
And that brought up everything from War of the Worlds, too, because going into War of the Worlds 2 was the same thing. It was like, “Yeah, hey man, listen, you worked with Cara last season. We can really ride this out and be strong.” And then he sided with the other side, targeting us — as much as he wants to play the victim about that — and it just brought up all those wounds. To me, I had a chance in previous seasons to throw myself down against rivals of mine, and I didn’t because it was the smartest strategic thing to do. And I regretted those decisions because I wanted those moments. And when I heard he was talking sh** the Jersey came out of me, and I was like, “All right, this motherf***er is talking sh**. I’m not gonna let it slide.” And as much as I like went into that deliberation thinking, “Should I be diplomatic and political?” when I looked across the table and I just saw him sitting there with his f***ing face, I just was like, “You know what? I wanna punch this guy in the face.”
Nurys: You remember that I literally looked at you before because before we even went in there, my thought process was, “Absolutely, we are not throwing Paulie. We’re not throwing Paulie in, we’re throwing Josh [Martinez] in, and that’s just what this needs to be. And I say “we” because it’s Horacio’s [Gutierrez Jr.] decision, but that means it’s also mine. I was like, “Absolutely not. Paulie’s not to go in” at one point. Paulie is like — I see him from across the table, he’s fuming. You could see that he was just ready to just say what he needed to say. And I looked at him and I was like, “Don’t throw yourself in. Don’t do it.” Literally just looking at him like, “Don’t do it.” And then the moment Theo starts to talk all of that went out the window. I said, “Dang it. Now, there’s nothing I can do about this.” Because yeah, kind of like CT [Tamburello] said, if you’re gonna tell someone “It’s OK to throw me in,” I mean, that’s gonna be the easiest thing for somebody to do is to just kind of, I guess give you what you want.
Paulie: Yeah, without a doubt. And honestly, I don’t regret anything. As far as Theo and I are concerned, like, you don’t beat me in a manner like that and expect it to just be over and just rainbows and butterflies next time. On my side of things, it’s like, I enjoy having competitors like Theo like Jordan in the house because it gives me something to train for — people like Orazio, right? They’re good, in the sense where I like competing against people that are good. I can’t see me and Horacio ever having beef because he’s just such a nice guy. And plus he’s with Nurys and Nurys is my girl. But I’d rather have Theo and Jordan there than other people that I’m just like, “What am I even doing here? There’s nobody that I even care to go at.” And after a loss like that, it’s like we can keep a cordial on social media, but every time I step into the next season, if he’s there, you waited five years to try and get revenge on me, well, now you unlocked the demon and now I’ll come for you every season.
Nury: Just don’t do it at the beginning. If you’re gonna go for him, go for him at the end, please.
Paulie: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because if we’re not on a team, all bets are off. We’re not on a team, all bets are off. You know what I mean? That’s it. It is what it is.
Nurys, Olivia has been complaining on social media that you guys’ conversations didn’t get aired to show some of the progress that you made in your friendship. Can you talk about what we didn’t see?
Nurys: Yeah. We actually — probably one of the first few days that we got into the house, we finally had a conversation. Because I would say for myself, I wanted to make sure to do that in front of the cameras. Because I refused to let the “he said, she said” stuff become a thing again. So we definitely talked.
We definitely talked probably one of the first few days we got there, and it actually was a really good conversation. I think a lot of stuff was like put out there. We definitely were crying. We definitely even argued a bit, but it ended up in resolution. We came to kind of to like a middle ground of kind of understanding at the end of the day, we — me, her, Michele [Fitzgerald], Kyland [Young], Horacio, we all come from season 38 and 39 together. And we knew that no matter what we’re also in an era… there’s also an alliance within our era, there’s also other alliances. So we knew that we had to kind of stick together. She apologized for everything that she did. And to me, I felt like for the first time that apology seemed very genuine. So I did — I accepted the apology. I kind of let things go.
Also, going into this house, you’re kind of walking into this house with people that have years of history, years of friendships. And I’m walking in with like not only a target on my back because I did so well in 39. But because I’m also in a relationship… People, for some reason, they didn’t enjoy watching me Horacio being together. A lot of people complained and they wanted us to be, I don’t know, they expected me to be like drunk and kissing ass all the time. And because I didn’t have that, I was consistently being told, “You’re not being a part of the game.” And it was moreso also not feeling comfortable within these older friendships that people have. So for me, naturally, I felt more comfortable with people that I already knew: Michelle, Olivia, Paulie, Cara [Maria Sorbello]. Those were the people that I would rather gravitate towards.
And also, I guess accepting her apology helped me feel more comfortable for myself and being able to find somebody to talk to, to hang out with even if it was just for a few minutes, even when you’re like sitting there waiting to go get food or going into the kitchen. My comfortability levels were more there with her and Michelle than it was with people that I had just met. So for my own sake, too, it was nice, just let it go and have somebody there.
Paulie, you said you’re gonna be coming after Theo in future seasons. Are you also gonna be coming after Johnny Bananas for what he did to Cara?
Paulie: I think mine and Johnny’s history has resolved itself. One of the things that Cara and I made a point of coming into this season, was like, “Hey, listen, like you’ve mended your things with All Stars. I’ve mended my things with Challenge USA. I’m gonna come in, I’m gonna have your back on everything, but I’m not gonna make your problems my problems like I’ve done in the past because it’s allowed me to not see the game the way that it needs to be seen.”
On War of the Worlds 1, there were some strategic plays that I could have made, but I was fighting her battles on War of the Worlds 2. There were some strategic plays that I could have made, but I was fighting her battles. So I was like, “If there comes a time where I could kill two birds with one stone, where the strategy lines up, and it’s fighting your battle, I’ll do it.” But as far as Johnny goes, it’s like, I have no interest in having beefs with people who are [a bit] older than me. Johnny is kind of chilling. He’s still gonna be Johnny, but he’s chilling… He plays the guitar on Saturdays. You know what I mean?
Do I know that there will always come a point in a game where he’s gonna take a shot at me? Sure. Is he high up on my list? No. There’s a ton of other people that are high up on my list. Like the vacation alliance, I feel like Michele’s decision was already being made because every time I talked to Michele to try and talk to her logically about the decision and everything, as soon as I would leave her, I would see someone like Laurel [Stucky] right up on her ass. I would see other people like Devin [Walker] — who now I know that they were hooking up, and I love their relationship, and I wish them all the best, and I love seeing Devin all skinny and looking like a freaking golf course dad… But I would see all of the people like Tori [Deal] would have a conversation, and it would just be in unison and even like with Horacio, I feel like our era, our winners were getting approached by everybody else from every other team, and I was coming into the season being like, “I’m just gonna see where the cards fall.” I know I got Nurys, I know I got Cara. Through having Nurys, I have Horacio, but the fact that everybody was so obsessed with numbers. And that’s just the game of telephone of life….
To me it’s like, “Okay, well, now you’re all f***ed because now you woke me up, you woke me up early. I went home early. So you didn’t have to play a whole season with me. If I would have came back into that house, the whole house was getting f***ing flipped on its head. And I’m not letting go of that. So everybody that had a hand in — including myself, I’ll say I had a hand in putting myself in that elimination — but anybody who had a conversation or felt like they were entitled to a conversation with the winners of our team kind of pisses me off because we are the new era and we’re f***ing serving and we are good competitors. But I feel like a lot of these people, they rest on their resumes and they rest on their numbers and I’m here to explode that sh**.
The Challenge 40: Battle of the Eras, Wednesdays, 8/7c, MTV
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