Unpacking the Karma Points Disaster in The Challenge 40 Finals!

0:00 Welcome back to the channel we're talking about the challenge finale for season 40 what an absolute marathon of a season this has been I think we started all the way back in August last year and we're only just finishing now maybe I've got my dates wrong but it feels like I've been talking about this season for at least four months now and it's great just like they had this marathon of swimming over seven checkpoints we've had this marathon of episodes to get through to finally Crown a champion of the most competitive season and the Challenges ever seen this was a battle of eras era 1 era 2 era 3 and era 4 all went head to head in the season and ultimately we've got a new five-time male Champion we've got a new three-time female champion and we've got a new two-time female champion as well I know that has been controversial especially if you look at some of the comments and things that are out there on X at the moment a lot of controversy around the karma point system ultimately I just want to briefly focus in this video on the finale what did I think about it so I loved it personally obviously you're never going to get a 10 out of 10 finale and there's always going to be something that you can nitpick in and you can say this is the thing that I didn't like and in this case I do think people have got a legitimate reason to be upset about the karma points but

1:20 I like the fact that the challenge mixed it up I spoke about that in my previous short video where I said doing this swimming sort of finale I think made this the most difficult finale that we've ever seen a lot of people may say there's been finales where they had to go up mountains they had to climb mountains they had to run in the desert but swimming isn't something that I think a lot of people are good at like I think that Rachel or someone Tori I think said it earlier in the season that everybody has got a treadmill in a gym not everybody swims all the time and someone like kand got found out in this finale and I think he's someone with his OCD kind of personality that's going to go away from the season he's going to learn from and he's going to work really hard on improving himself as a swimmer and an all round athlete and if he can bring that aspect into his game I do think that you know I kind of went up against Kahuna and said that Cory would win a finale before kand seeing kin's hard and pushing through in this finale and him not giving up and then knowing that he was just never going to win it as soon as it was a swimming finale and as soon as we knew that's not his strength I do think I may be wrong there I may have to pull that back and say klin's probably got it because he's only got to work on this one aspect I feel like and he would be a pretty complete athlete or pretty complete Challenger in finales moving forward but I loved it thought it was a

2:40 Great finale the checkpoints were amazing the only big issue that if we are going to talk about it let's talk about it the karma points two checkpoints out of a total of nine gives you a 22% sort of variance that you can have on the finale and the final results one of the things that for me was very interesting and I don't know what other people think about this is the fact that they were willing to show us how the karma points actually affected placement and they gave us a screen at the end to show how Derek got second and let it think in the karma points was that powerful that we were four points away from having Derek win this season 40 after Jordan dominated he absolutely dominated the final there was no other guy that was even close to him I think Derek may have won the counting coins portion of it but I mean that's a bit fluky and Derek nearly took the championship of what I think is the challengers most important season right that alone tells you that the Cal up Point structure was completely broken but they showed us how it played out for the men quite clearly for the women they didn't give us that same breakdown because if they had to give us that breakdown they would have had to focus on the fact that Rachel had a very tough finale she I think the highest placement she had

4:00 Was in the coin counting maybe when she did that but she was struggling she had fourth place in sand blast third place in Ghost Ship third place in Thousand Steps first place in the coin counting third place in submerging Terror third place in mathematical Ledger and then third place in the C scooter Sprint so her best placement was one first placement in checkpoint 4 and the rest of it was either third place or fourth place okay only the first one she was fourth place she was pretty much consistently third place throughout all of this and the problem that I have with this because I know a lot of people are big Rachel fans and she's a queen she clearly is like I like her as well this is not me having a dick at Rachel being someone that absolutely deserved her spot in this season that absolutely added a lot of value to this season and that she's been entertaining to watch but this changed the challenge concept of you go into a finale you perform better than the other people out there and you win outright I know it's not the first time that the challenge has done really controversial things I mean we had all stars recently with the Laurel win but it just they have to learn from this because it takes away from their credibility for me personally as a legitimate game show where people are on equal footing playing for this money and a lot of people will say your social political game is important

5:21 And Rachel is a queen at that for sure but Jenny had no chance right and Michelle had no chance like these are new players to the game they're from era 4 they don't have 20 years wor of Friendship with these people so immediately you're starting on a back foot and if you're wanting to do that then you can obviously bring the karma votes in I didn't even dislike the concept of Karma votes but you can't have it be this powerful where it swings someone that predominantly finished in third place and fourth place from third place to join Champion I was actually you know and I'm not the biggest Jenny Stan either people know that like and again nothing against Jenny but there's been times where I've been like I don't know what she's doing she's not been that entertaining but she got more entertaining towards the end of the season for sure but you cannot take away from her that she dominated this finale as a female she was actually starting to push Jordan and some of the swimming portions in the second day and maybe it is because he started slowing down he started pacing himself because he was so far ahead of everyone else the woman they were a lot more competitive but she is a legitimate threat to become I think the best F competitor that we've ever seen on The Challenge and you've got to give her flowers when she's been outperforming everybody she had so many first places if you wanted to bring up something for Jenny and say this is

6:41 Where she losted or this is why she didn't deserve to win out right you could talk about the coin counting and where she absolutely cracked when she couldn't sleep and just had a quick guess of how many coins there were and then went to sleep early but she only missed out by 90 coins I believe in the end it said and if you look at the variance in that coin counting they had anything from 5,700 coins to about 6,600 it's like a 900 coin variance so she made a calculated decision took some extra sleep so she could recover for the next day but that one checkpoint should not be the reason you go from first to join first in my opinion and I was extremely happy and relieved when Jenny didn't get this first place stolen from her she's definitely a challenger that when she won the first time she played didn't get a call back for so many seasons and we all said for so many times she should come back we should see this new Champion get another opportunity at playing the challenge we're looking for new strong female competitors we always hear about the bananas we hear about CTI we hear about Jordan the men get to bolt these legacies but it's very hard for females to do that in recent times it was more so car Maria and probably Laurel that were those two people that had a bit of a legacy and then Tori has sort of started coming into the conversation more and more as well but yeah very relieved that Jenny

8:01 Didn't get this title stolen from her and also very happy for both of them that they won money but still you have to feel that Michelle was hard on by this as well because she was in second place and really legitimately outperformed Rachel and Tori for this whole finale this really if it was kylin's weakness to do a lot of swimming this was Michelle's best case scenario doing a lot of swimming because she was out swimming a lot of them if you think about the math checkpoint where she was the last female to get away and beating bananas she outs swam both Rachel and Tori on the way back to the boat which is very impressive to see but for me personally like I said the this specific Karma point system not a fan of it very controversial but the outcome at the end wasn't as bad as it could have been we have Jordan a new five-time Champion we've got Jenny a new two-time champion and we've got Rachel a three-time champion I believe matching and please correct me in the comments section if I'm wrong I think Evelyn and Veronica are both three time Champions as well so brilliant to see talking about the woman talking about the controversial thing around that let's focus a little bit on Jordan he's now a five-time champion maybe this deserves a video on its own the guy is an absolute

9:21 Beast and we probably should start talking about him now as one of the best who have ever done it so if you look at Jordan he's had how many finals let's see nine finals that he competed in won five lost four winning percentage of 56% which is very impressive when you look at someone like bananas he's done 23 finals he's won seven times and he's lost 16 times in a final now giving him an approximate winning percentage of 30% and then CT who a lot of people have said is the goat and I think it was because of his pound-for-pound winning more finals than bananas when he actually gets there he's also got five wins so you know five wins six losses 11 finals gives him a 45% win rate so in my mind Jordan sitting at 56% now not having won the most but definitely being the most pound-for-pound effective Challenger in getting in finals and winning them there's an argument to be made that Jordan is the new goat of the challenge and he won a season more difficult than any other season that we've seen and not once twice and the reason I say twice is because he went in world championship and he went up against a bunch of people who had to win their own franchises as well who were very strong competitors and

10:41 Some of these people were legitimate athletes playing in World Championships so World Championship was definitely a season before Battle of the IRS that I would have said is probably the most competitive season we ever seen and then he's just gone one up and he's beaten the best of all of the eras so to me the case now should be made that Jordan wisely is the best that we've ever seen on The Challenge he did say at the end of this specific episode that they can give him a call when the challenge 50 is out when there's a new big season big theme and I want to know do you guys think that Jordan is not going to come back for 10 seasons he is now out I mean if they do two seasons a year you're looking at five years so I'm unsure as to how old he is now it's like 33 34 he's still got time he can do it I mean if you got bananas coming back and CT winning championships in his 40s Jordan is no exception this guy's going to stay in shape he's going to become a race car driver which needs he needs to be really fit to be able to do that so I'm very interested to know what people think do you think he'll come back and is it time for people now to hang up their boots a little bit like you know do we need to see bananas come back do another season on the main show he adds a lot of drama he's still got ongoing rivalries with Tori and Michelle and there's lots of story lines that he can be involved in he's kind of cashing in a paycheck I feel like at the moment he's getting to these finals but he can't

12:01 Win them anymore and there's younger people that are just outperforming him and he clearly doesn't care about hurting his finale win percentage when it comes to where he is in the game at the moment and he's sort of towards that latter part of his challenge career and then you know somebody like CT for instance do CT and bananas do they belong more on Allstar Seasons now or do we see them on the main Seasons coming forward and who do you think out of all of the people that are currently on the challenge roster is more likely to win in future seasons for me if it comes to the men I have to say kyland and Cory they're right up there for me as two people that could win future Seasons obviously you've got aaso if he wants to come back and do more seasons as well for the women Michelle proved herself she proved herself this season she proved herself in the finale and you know no matter how you look at it she's going to be there I just don't know in the future if it's running if she can compete with these people there's some absolute beasts that are still playing the game like T she's not out of her prime yes she got fourth place in this specific season but I can see Tori winning another season for sure she's one of the people in my mind that have gone up in my mind the most that I'm really enjoying still seeing and a lot of that was due to the fact that the vacation Lions was out of the game very early on and then you've got Jenny is a

13:21 Two-time champion and if Jenny comes back and do another two or three seasons man like you got to get rid of this girl early on because if you go up against her and the final it's going to be tough it's going to be tough going she can run with the men she can beat men in finals so I can easily see Jenny becoming the goat of females after this performance in this finale anyways maybe I'll do a separate video we'll talk a little bit about like who the players that I would like to see come back the most in future Seasons we've also got the challenge All Stars Rivals that are coming out so I haven't done any content on that so expect a short video to drop in the near future for that as well and we'll also have Kahuna back on the Channel with me Monday evening my time Monday morning over in the us where we will talk about the finale and a live podcast format so stay tuned for that but moving forward expect to see a lot more short form videos rather than the live podcast videos lives are going to change a little bit on the channel I have I'll do a separate update on how I see the channel sort of evolving this year and how we're going to be running things but thank you for your loyalty thank you for always jumping on and commenting below please subscribe if you're new to the channel hit a like button and I'll catch you guys next time bye