It took almost a decade, but longtimeThe ChallengeveteranWes Bergmannfinally got his third championship.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Congrats on getting your third win!
WES BERGMANN:I mean, I played a flawless game.
‘The Challenge’ host TJ Lavin with winners Wes Bergmann and Jonna Mannion.Paul Castillero/Paramount+
Let’s start with that.
It is what it is.
I’m normally pretty cocky, but let’s be real, I played a very great game.
‘The Challenge: All Stars’ competitors.Paul Castillero/Paramount+
So I just dealt with it accordingly.
How has this win affected your outlook on your future onThe Challengemoving forward?
It doesn’t change my outlook at all.
Wes Bergmann on ‘The Challenge: All Stars.'.Paul Castillero/Paramount+
It’s a game that I love and always have and probably always will.
The likelihood that I’ll find myself on some version of aChallengein the future is very high.
It’s like they just repainted my target with fresh red paint.
Sometimes there’s just things that I can’t get out of in my real life due to scheduling.
I don’t think like that.
If there’s a shot, I take it.
I don’t want to say that I doubted it.
It’s just that I very much was reminded early on that all the other players were very good.
But it just wasn’t.
Those are men that on any given day could beat me at anything.
The only thing that’s different about this is it lets me cuss.
It blew the roof off.
There’s a reason why it’s such an important tool of comedians.
But on the showcasing your game thing, I’ve been doing that forever.
I didn’t do anything different there.
On that side, I didn’t really change anything.
But I’m telling you, back to that cussing, it’s very, very helpful.
It’s wild just how big of a difference that makes onAll Stars.
Yeah, I was watching the CBS one last night and they had to bleep something out.
I’m like, “That sucks.
I remember that.”
How did this season and win compare to your past seasons and wins?
Each of the three wins that I’ve had means something different to me.
That one still, a decade and a half later, feels surreal.
2 friends in real life [with me].
We got first, second, and third place.
People should be clamoring to be one of my people.
it’s possible for you to’t win without loyalty.
There is no such thing as a winner, especially a multi-time winner, that’s disloyal.
You cannot do it.
They see what they want to see, but that’s why they don’t win.
One was a marathon and one was an ultra-marathon.
But this one onAll Starswas very challenging.
It was probably top 15 most difficult finals ever across the 40-ish some odd seasons.
It’s not like it was easy by any stretch of the imagination.
It just wasn’t on the same level as the hardest one of all time.
I had to keep my head on a swivel.
I was upset just because I had the rest of the guys dead to rights.
Then all of a sudden, TJ gives everyone a little pit stop and I get seasick immediately.
That’s what I wanted.
At what point did you realize you were going to win?
After the eating, I got into celebration mode.
The other guys did very, very well, it’s just I freakin’ brought it.
I didn’t lose sight of the fact that every single checkpoint mattered, every single point mattered.
We have to talk about that eating challenge because that looked absolutely disgusting.
How on earth did you go into “zombie mode” to smash that checkpoint?
There was no one to negotiate with.
Not that he would ever negotiate.
Yeah, I still can’t believe how much you had to eat.
How long did it take you?
I have nightmares about it.
I want to say like 45 minutes, maybe?
But they kind of had to show each one of these checkpoints because they were for points.
