Jordan Wiseley and Aneesa Ferreira talk surviving The Challenge: Ride or Dies 100-hour final
Warning: This article contains spoilers for the finale of The Challenge: Ride or Dies.
Despite Aneesa Ferreira rolling her ankle in the first five minutes of The Challenge: Ride or Dies' 100-hour final, she and her partner Jordan Wiseley almost made it all the way to the end. But a surprise final elimination against Johnny "Bananas" Devenanzio and Nany Gonzalez ended their season, as Ferreira's ankle (and knee) injury took her down. They ultimately watched Tori Deal and Devin Walker win the season.
Below, Wiseley and Ferreira talk with EW about surviving that 100-hour final, the extent of her injuries, and more.
mtv 'The Challenge: Ride or Dies'
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What has it been like watching these episodes back and reliving the 100-hour final?
JORDAN WISELEY: I'll answer real quick: I haven't watched. This season was just really, really difficult for me mentally, with all the Tori stuff. I'm good with it, I lived it, I really don't want to watch it.
ANEESA FERREIRA: I watch it because I have to podcast about it. It's been hard to relive it, but it's over. I wish the final would've been two days and not four, it was just a lot.
WISELEY: It was so much, zero recovery, the sleep was terrible. I would've rather done a night or two of no sleep than four of sleeping on the ground and being sore. We did over 13 miles the first day, Aneesa did it on a bum ankle, and the entire time was just compounding.
This was the first 100-hour final, but you're not competing for all 100 hours because you had breaks to rest at camp. How did it ultimately compare to finals you've done in the past?
WISELEY: The big thing about it was the time standing on our feet. I don't know necessarily from bell to bell, TJ's horn to horn, if it was more competition time. But I can tell you the amount of just being on our feet — not just standing around, but moving from location to location and then even with a chance to sit down, it wasn't putting your feet up. In that regard of just sheer holding your body up, it was probably the most, absolutely, that I've ever done.
Aneesa, when you finally got your ankle checked out, how bad was the damage?
FERREIRA: I was more concerned with my knee, because I didn't know what was going on. But when it started swelling, I was trying to avoid the inevitable. I got a doctor's appointment in Argentina for the day after I got home, and my doctor moved my leg around and was like, "You just tore a bunch of stuff in here. Get an MRI, but you already tore your ACL so I'm just telling you now, you're going to need surgery." And I'm like, "Not again." The ankle, that just takes time. Once you roll them, unless you are really strict with mobility work, you're going to keep rolling them. The stuff around it will harden, but at its core just they aren't as strong as they used to be, so the ankle wasn't what I was worried about, it was my knee that I was worried about.
WISELEY: Yeah, the knee was bad.
How has the recovery been since then?
FERREIRA: Actually, incredible. I have amazing doctors who, 10 days post-op, I was right back in [physical therapy]. I go to PT four days a week. I've been going to hot yoga, CrossFit, just everything, keeping moving. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I was down, but I'm not out. I feel really good. It's just now about getting my full strength back.
WISELEY: I just hope, Aneesa, what you've done throughout this entire season, you know how hard it was in that final, I hope that doing that while injured is just motivation for you, when you bounce back from this, you're going right back to a final. And then it's a whole different story.
FERREIRA: I do feel a little bit more like you have my back, but I have it too. I let a lot of people get to me, all the other outside voices, and I let them break me down to where I started to believe their lies. So it was me fighting with myself and these weird voices of strangers. Now it's just like, f--- them.
mtv 'The Challenge: Ride or Dies'
Overall, how did you both feel about your performance in the final?
FERREIRA: I knew that going in, it was drilled into our heads that anyone could win. But I feel like a lot of people would've quit if they were us.
WISELEY: One hundred percent! Anybody else, if they were looking at our hill, they would have quit halfway through day 2.
FERREIRA: Or maybe even earlier. Day one was a lot. I couldn't push myself that much more, but I would've had to collapse before I quit. And that literally happened. Twice. But I mean, we did what we could, and looking back, I can't change anything, so I'm not going to stress myself out picking the final apart. It has kept me up at night and I'm like, "What's done is done. Everything happens for a reason." Jordan was there when I needed him, and we went through what we went through and we came out stronger.
WISELEY: Absolutely, I wouldn't change anything that we did with competition or strategy or effort, anything like that. Hindsight is obviously 20/20, if we would've known that we could have coasted a little bit more until we got to the eliminations, yeah, of course. But nobody knew that and we can't go back. The only thing is, of course, I wish I would've been a little bit softer with my friend. I know she was in pain and I really, really, really knew we could win, and I was just so frustrated with, like, "Not an injury, not something else in our way." Obviously I got frustrated there, and I wish I would've been a little bit softer with my teammate in that moment when she needed me to be soft.
FERREIRA: I wish I could just bottle Jordan up and put him inside of me. [Laughs] Wait, not like that. I mean, if I could just implant a little bit of that Jordan mentality of "S--- could be worse, pain is temporary, you can do this," then I think I have a great chance in the future, for however long my body will allow me to play.
WISELEY: I think you've got a lot longer and a lot more to do.
FERREIRA: Aw, thanks, Jordy. I don't know how amazing it was to live through, but I love Jordan more now because of it. I'll tell you, trauma bonds are real.
What did you think of the new Balls In rules, where once you got inside the rope ring it was a free shot at the basket?
WISELEY: Ugh, I hated it. I'm better on the ground, as someone who grew up wrestling, and I am better in tight quarters, in close range, so I want all the time that I can for wrestling. With that goal line, it really limited the wrestling. That thing was tiny, you pretty much said go and you were an arm's length away from each other, and then you were another two steps from the goal line.
FERREIRA: I didn't love it. But my body was doing different things than what I needed it to, because there wasn't much I could do in terms of pivoting or anything like that after I had injured it. The more space we had and without the safe zone, there wasn't much of a chance for me, so at least I could use my body weight to kind of walk her with me. So that played to my advantage.
MTV 'The Challenge: Ride or Dies'
How did you feel about Bananas and Nany's strategies of using your clothing to pull you down, or going straight for your injury, to win?
FERREIRA: I wouldn't have cared if I didn't… I think I tore my ACL before that even happened. So no matter what she did, she didn't even touch me and I collapsed. If I didn't have a knee injury at all, I think I would've been better off, clearly. Other than that, she had to do what she had to do. I wasn't angry about it.
WISELEY: And same for me. I'm actually really proud of the way Nany and Bananas both competed. I thought they were good, clean rounds, even though Aneesa was hurt. I thought they were good competitive rounds and a good show of how Balls In is supposed to be played. There was respect. All's fair when your butt's on the line and you're 82-plus hours in. They didn't gouge our eyes or fish-hook us, so good on 'em.
Jordan, this was your second Balls In elimination loss this season. What did you take away from those experiences to improve in the future?
FERREIRA: To do the next one naked so no one can pull your clothes.
WISELEY: [Laughs] Yeah. There's a reason that I was a quarterback and not great on defense. Between Bananas and Horacio, Johnny represents the classic brute strength and Horacio is this phenom of an athlete that came in, and they both played the game differently and both had really good success. I think I go home and just break down breaking down and fundamental tackling. That's something that I haven't worked on in a long time, not since I was in high school playing football. And since I really rely on the wrestling, whenever that short line was there, it kind of took away a little bit of my mat space, but I've got to be able to play through and I'll work on that for sure.
You both were originally partnered with other people before filming began, so how did you feel about your chances at winning when you were paired together and sent into the game?
WISELEY: My strategy didn't really change. When I got partnered with Aneesa, I was like, "This is great. I think that we have the ability to lie really low." We didn't, but we really tried. We really tried. But people just kept saying our names early on, and I'm like, "Goddamn."
FERREIRA: We also weren't terrible at challenges. We were always second or third, so it didn't help that we were performing well.
WISELEY: In hindsight, if we didn't think that we could just outright win, which I really thought we could win every challenge, we should have just lost all of them. Because it didn't penalize you to be last. And then people maybe would've really thought we sucked and not need to worry about us.
mtv 'The Challenge: Ride or Dies'
You're both close with Tori, so what was it like being there when she won and getting to celebrate with her?
FERREIRA: It was so cold and rainy, but it was really nice to watch your friend win, because it was almost like a win for me. That's my girl. At one point she's going to buy me drinks with that [prize money].
WISELEY: For me, getting to watch Tori win was one of my best Challenge moments. I really, really know how hard she's worked, for so long. She has truly wanted to be a Challenge champion since she started, and she's worked for it. I've watched her up her offseason game every single year, make adjustments every single season, and learn from her past mistakes, so that was really cool to watch. And for her and I to have such an up-and-down season, it was a really, really beautiful thing to watch her win, in such a great way too.
Jordan, how are you and Tori doing now?
WISELEY: Honestly, we are in the best place that we have been since separating. As tough as the season was for me, it was like ripping off of band-aid. It needed to be done, we needed to face each other and talk and be around each other and just kind of force it, because we weren't going to make it happen on our own.
What was your reaction when Devin and Tori announced they were giving some of their winnings to all the finalists?
FERREIRA: It was like getting third place, and third place is usually like $15,000, so this was definitely a step up. It was very kind of them.
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