Interview with MTV The Challenge: Battle of the Exes, Dunbar

Two weeks ago, Paula and Dunbar were placed head-to-head against Ty and Emily in what will now be known as their final Dome. Despite a whirlwind onscreen romance, Paula and Dunbar were forced to fight against The Challenge's undefeated team,Ty and Emily. However, despite their problems early on, Dunbar and Paula made an effort to get mend their differences and push through the obstacles. Dunbar took a moment to chat with TheCelebrityCafe.com and fill us in what it was like competing with a woman who previously wouldn't say two words to him. The ever-relaxed Dunbar reflects on what he would have done differently and offers survival advice to those in the house.

TheCelebrityCafe: Of all of the people on The Challenge you seemed relatively quiet compared to others. Was this strategy, or luck of editing?

Dunbar: It wasn’t really strategy, it’s just that I’m not a whiney three year old that does stupid stuff in front of camera’s essentially to come across relevant like somebody out there in the world. It’s the mentality that’s going in The Challenge now that it’s like, ‘Hey, you want to make a name for yourself you’ve got to act like a jackass.’ That’s something new and it wasn’t like that when I first started off doing this and it’ just become like the way it is and it’s annoying.

TCC: Tell me about your final Dome.

D: It sucked. I wish it was anything but that, I wish I had approached it differently. It’s one of those things that, Ty had a lot of strengths compared to the other guys in the house, and the one thing he does have is with short distances, he is by far a very very quick guy. He can challenge anybody in the house, and, he’s almost the tallest guy in the house, I think CT barely [comes close to him], he’s 6’2” and was a college receiver, it’s a fact - he’s a quick dude. It sucks that’s what it was and I have bad knees, I’m not that fast when it comes to that kind of stuff. I’ll jog slowly for 20 miles from Army experience or whatever, but it sucks that that’s the cards I was dealt. There’s always luck in the games and sometimes it’s come through and helped me out a lot, and other times, like this, it just kind of sucks. Any girl there will get their asses whipped by Emily, so it sucks that we got that couple.

TCC: Why did Diem want to throw you and Paula in the dome with Ty and Emily?

D: She stressed to me a bunch that she’s really, really feels that this is her last Challenge or whatever, and she wanted to win more than anything. She felt that just going off of her experience with me and Paula, that we would win the final. After watching the final, I’d say I’d win the final too cuz it looked like something that was right up our ally. But, she wanted to get rid of a marathon team. I think she realized that Robin and Camila were weaker girls when it came to that kind of stuff than Paula was…she made a really good political move. I can’t say that I wouldn’t do the same thing. Truth be told, if the cards were reversed, I would probably want to get rid of Diem! She’s light weight and always caring the girl element in every final that I’ve ever seen. It’s a huge advantage when you have this tiny little bean pole that can run for days! I understand where the rational came from and I don’t hate her for it.

TCC: Did you feel that when Ty and Paula started hooking up that it would put a target on your backs?

D: No, in fact, if it could do anything to keeping Ty and Emily from…luckily for us they weren’t very good at winning challenges. If they ever did slip up and win a challenge then the first name out of Emily’s mouth is going to be Paula. So if we can fit in tighter with that team, the better…it’s just a kind of outcast group, which means you never know where they’re going to go politically anyway, so anything we can do to wrangle them in to our already kind-of-arrangement with the other couples in the house that we were working with then… it worked for a while. It just sucks the way things worked out. Dustin went home with his partner, Vinny went home with his partner, and that changed the whole dynamic of the game. It made it a different game and it made it where all of a sudden these four guys who had an agreement to now start going against each other.

TCC: At the beginning of the show, it seemed that your and Paula’s relationship was on the rocks, how is your friendship now?

D: Ha! It didn’t exist! “On the rocks” would have been an improvement! [laughing] I consider her a friend; she’s a weird, misunderstood little fragile thing. It just sucks that girls like her, like when Robin or Diem would gang up on her, make her cry, or go crazy…But she’s a great competitor. When it comes to finals there’s not a better girl on the show. I would take her over Emily and all of the other 150 pound girls who only think they’re bad-asses by virtue of the fact that they’re not the typical 110 pound cheerleader types that always get their asses kicked in these things. I was discerned by the egos of the girls on that side of the game. It’s like, ‘Congratulations, you’re a lot better than a bunch of sloppy misfits.’ The guys actually trained their asses off for this all year, and we’re going head to head, and the girls show up like, swigging Jack Daniels and beers and smoking cigarettes, clearly it’s two different games down the line of the sexes.

TCC: What is the hardest part of competing in the Challenge?

D: The stress! Everyone’s paranoid, nobody trusts anybody, it’s just stressful. I said it on one episode, and they made it a joke or whatever, you know when you walk in a room and you’re pretty sure they’re talking about you before you got there? Well, The Challenge, it’s guaranteed that in the other room they’re talking about you. Whoever’s next, it’s like, “Let’s get rid of that guy,” it’s just a battle of who’s the last person in the room?

TCC: What is the best advice you could give someone going into a houseful of exes, competing for a cash prize?

D: Stay in your room, build a tent and read Harry Potter books. I knocked out like three books while I was there. Don’t get involved in anything, that’s not the best advice to get invited back, but that’s the best advice to not go insane.

TCC: If you could do it all over again, would you change anything?

D: I think I would have made some different moves; I definitely wouldn’t have thrown in Emily and Ty when I threw them. I think I would have gone a different direction… I wouldn’t have trusted CT the way I did and…It just sucks it went down the way it did, if I could redo it, I wish I would have approached our Dome differently and there’s a lot of ways we could have won or made our possibilities way better.

WordPress › Error

There has been a critical error on your website.

Learn more about debugging in WordPress.