Zach Nichols criticized his former castmate, Laurel Stucky, for her abrupt and surprising exit from The Challenge: Battle of the Eras.
For more than half of the season, viewers saw Laurel seem to excel at the game due to being part of Era 2 alongside strategic ally Johnny Bananas.
However, things changed when the game became individual. While Laurel was still considered one of Bananas’ allies with the Bananas Angels, she could not perform adequately during a mini-final challenge.
That occurred in Episode 12 when host TJ Lavin informed the cast that the man and woman who finished in last place among the competitors would automatically go home.
Viewers saw Laurel struggle once she got the memory game puzzle involved in the daily challenge. She described it as “torture” due to the conditions and said she was ready to go home.
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While Laurel claimed she quit the competition, Zach blasted her on his podcast, saying she “couldn’t cut it” compared to the others.
Zach said Laurel ‘couldn’t cut it’ in Season 40 mini-final
During the Zach Nichols Podcast, host Pierre Caball spoke about seeing “someone quit” during the mini-final: their “good friend Laurel.”
“She didn’t quit. She didn’t quit. That’s not a quit.” Zach said, interrupting his co-host.
“Here’s what happened. The way to describe that best is there’s always that guy on the playground that talks s**t. ‘I’m gonna beat you. I’m gonna whoop your a**,’ and then it gets tough, and then they start to lose, and they’re like, ‘Oh f*** this, I don’t wanna play anymore,’” Zach said.
He criticized his former castmate for refusing to humbly admit she couldn’t defeat her fellow female competitors in that particular event.
“She couldn’t cut it. She knew that she was going to lose and instead of fighting and gracefully just being like, ‘I’m not as good as the girls here. I’m not in shape to keep up with them,’ she thought it would be less embarrassing to be like, ‘I don’t want to be here. I’m too cool for this. I’m good to go.’ That’s just because you knew you couldn’t cut it,” he said.
Zach claimed fans would be more on Laurel’s side if she’d had a different exit strategy in which she fought “as hard as she could” to finish and show she wanted to compete and be there.
However, Zach said that instead of admitting defeat because she wasn’t physically prepared, she looked “like a punk” with her actions.
Nehemiah and Laurel had different takes after the purge took them out of Season 40
During post-purge comments, Nehemiah Clark said he still had a lot left in him, but the event didn’t go his way. Still, his perspective included him praising the show.
“This is exactly what you need to go through to win a final. The mini-final. I gave it my all,” Nehemiah said in his post-purge comments.
He shared that digging up the key buried in the sand quicker would’ve helped him move faster in the competition and finish better. He also said he’d never been part of a purge before and wished he could’ve fought for his spot at The Arena.
“I’m proud that I was able to compete at the level I did,” Nehemiah said before leaving the show.
Meanwhile, All Stars 4 winner Laurel had a very different perspective on how she was leaving Battle of the Eras season.
“I’m actually completely fine with walking away, and good luck to the winner,” Laurel said before footage showed her riding in the back of a pickup truck.
“Many people would die for this opportunity, and it’s a blessing to be here. Literally, I come here to have fun and do challenges, and I can’t even fathom the fact that I’ve been doing this for 14 years of my life. I just came out of All Stars 4 with $250,000. I am literally not greedy,” she said.
“I’m peacefully going out very happy,” the two-time champion said.
While that may be true, it likely lowered her superstar or legend status in many fans’ minds because she departed from a season stacked with the best of the best from The Challenge.
The Challenge: Battle of the Eras airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on MTV.