And that’s just one reason Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio won’t put himself through that sort of romantic gauntlet again.
He’s done the showmance thing with Natalie Negrotti and Moriah Jadea and continued dating Morgan Willett two years after they met on 2019’s The Challenge: War of the Worlds. But, ultimately, on-camera relationships tend to be “way more headaches than I need,” he told Us Weekly in 2023. “It never ends well, and it only is gonna make your game more complicated.”
Because, regardless if the inital spark was strategic or the start of something truly special, once you start a showmance, you’re, as he put it, “now taking ownership of this other person’s game,” meaning fellow competitors see the pairing as a natural alliance.
“Females are gonna look at it like, ‘Oh, well, you know, Bananas is with this girl, that means that they’re working together or vice versa,'” he continued. And god forbid your romantic partner’s game play gets messy, “You’re kind of now responsible.”
