Paulie Discusses the Off-Set Fight that May Have Gotten Him Suspended from The Challenge

Flashback: It’s 2019. War of the Worlds 2 was airing, and the cast flew to London to film the reunion special. This cast had a lot of drama, and we saw the cast members arguing on the stage, but there was a physical fight outside of the studio.

If you saw War of the Worlds 2 (before it was scrubbed from existence), you’d know Paulie wasn’t getting along with most of the cast. Recently, he spoke with Derrick and Scott from the Challenge Mania Podcast about the infamous incident (about 1 hour, 10 minutes in).

Paulie recalls that the fight involved Josh, Kyle, Bananas, Bear, and Theo. According to Paulie, the “OG greats” like CT said they would handle their drama off-screen with fights back in the day. So, he planned on squashing his beef with an off-screen brawl. Apparently, there weren’t supposed to be cameras involved, but some people (he specifically names Bananas, but it seems like Bear also recorded) decided to film the altercation.

Paulie confesses that he “swung on a bunch of people,” and he says people were hit in the face. Specifically, he confesses to hitting Josh, but he use plural language when discussing the incident. So after the incident happened, the recorded footage made its way back to production.

But, this doesn’t seem to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Paulie claims production sat him down after the incident and said they wished he would have had this altercation while filming the reunion. Still, producers didn’t seem super happy with Paulie, and they told him he was not allowed to make certain insults or comments about Bananas. Paulie doesn’t specify what those comments were, probably because he wouldn’t want to clone his suspension.

Allegedly, Bananas was looking for an olive branch to end his drama with Paulie, but Paulie wanted Bananas to get on his knees, beg for forgiveness, and admit he was a good Challenger. Clearly, this never happened, so Paulie refused to work with him on Challenge 35. But Paulie wasn’t cast on Total Madness, and he disappeared for four years.

At this point, Paulie said he’s mended the relationships that were fractured during the War of the Worlds era. The Challenge Mania Podcast spoke further about Paulie’s view on Challenge rivalries, so the episode is definitely worth listening to.