Eliminations are as essential to MTV's long-running reality competition The Challenge as daily challenges, finals, and TJ Lavin is. Every major player in Challenge history has had to face elimination, and these final chances for players to stay in the game come in every form imaginable.
When a certain elimination style works really well or becomes a fan favorite, it will often reappear season after season, with other versions and iterations of it popping up every once in a while too. But, there are also some eliminations that are total busts. Which elimination formats are played out, and which do fans want to see more of?
Played Out: Balls Of Fire
This elimination round made a brief appearance on The Challenge, and hopefully will never return again. While it never became a common elimination, Cory and Nelson basically broke the elimination by being so bad at it.
It's essentially a soccer kick-off, but as the two Young Bucks demonstrated, anyone who doesn't actually have experience with soccer is basically going to be incapable of completing the elimination.
Want More: Dead Ringer
and Ashley went head to head in this odd elimination that involved the players being rigged up on a harness and having to hang rings on poles.
What makes this elimination a great concept though is that it requires troubleshooting and strategy, none of the players how to do it right going in, which is a great way of giving both competitors a fair shot at winning.
Played Out: Chair'd Remains
This utterly moronic elimination only appeared once, and it ended one of Nany's best runs in Challenge history. The idea is that each elimination player calls out someone else to duct tape their opponent to a chair, and then whoever breaks out of the duct tape first, wins.
The elimination largely relies on the strategy of whatever random person the player picks from the rest of the contestants, which is idiotic for an elim.
Want More: Lights Out
Most eliminations focus on one single skill set, and whoever is bigger, stronger, faster, or can just pick up the knack for it first winds up being the winner.
Lights Out is a better elimination in the sense that it requires the players to complete a puzzle, but once the light illuminating the room their puzzle is in goes out they have to run out and turn it back on, so it's a test of intelligence, strength, and endurance.
Played Out: Balls In
Balls In is an elimination setup that is pretty good, however, it's just been way overplayed over the course of the past few seasons of The Challenge. It's not the kind of elimination that is going to yield new strategies or more interesting results, and at this point the players know how to play it, so it's just not that interesting.
Once producers have to set the titular balls on fire in order to make it interesting, clearly it's time to retire the format.
Want More: Branched Out
This elimination needs to become a Challenge regular based on the insanely meme-able celebration Laurel had when she mistakenly thought she won.
But even putting that aside, a climbing elimination that requires essentially putting puzzle pieces into the climbing apparatus is a unique idea that has different elements to the competition and taps into climbing skills that most players (except for Ninja) aren't going to be accustomed to playing with.
Played Out: Pole Wrestle
The Challenge often comes up with minor variations of the Pole Wrestle concept, for example using a ring instead of a pole, and asking players to put that ring on something in order to win the round.
And while Pole Wrestle is obviously iconic at this point, there isn't much new to explore with the idea, and some seasoned vets have already played the elimination a few times over, giving them a significant advantage in the game.
Want More: Trivia
Trivia is TJ's favorite daily challenge of the season, and it's a solid fan favorite as well. There have been a few trivia-based eliminations in the history of The Challenge such as Name That Coconut, but it's not a Challenge elimination mainstay in the way that some other ideas are.
Trivia is a fairly equalizing competition, oftentimes it's not obvious who will win a trivia challenge or elimination from the start, which makes it more intriguing than a lot of other elimination concepts.
Played Out: Hall Brawl
While Hall Brawl has become a veritable Challenge classic, honestly, it's not the best elimination in the game today.
The mechanics of the elimination are obviously very simple, there isn't an enormous amount of strategy involved, and essentially whoever is the biggest competitor in the elimination will win. And as many of the an elimination win is a requirement.
Want More: Knot So Fast
Given that the idea behind The Challenge should be testing its player's abilities to perform in all aspects of the game, the Knot So Fast-style eliminations are one of the best concepts that the show has come up with.
It's a test of strategy, ingenuity, strength, and endurance, and while obviously, the concept is the same every time, each player can come up with their own way of actually playing the elimination.
