‘The Challenge’ Season 37 Spoilers: ‘Messy’ Fessy Shafaat Explains All the Reasons He Should NOT Be Banned for Life

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS

• Fessy put his hands on Josh during their blowout on ‘The Challenge’
• Fessy was sent home, while everyone else got warnings
• ‘The Challenge’ star explains why he shouldn’t be banned for life

The Challenge season 37 featured a major meltdown between “Messy” Fessy Shafaat and Josh Martinez. The besties started out in the Big Brother alliance and disagreed about gameplay, but overall things seemed to be going pretty well.

That all changed in episode seven when a blowout between the two resulted in Fessy’s disqualification. After the altercation, fans are wondering if Fessy will be invited back to future seasons of The Challenge. According to Fessy, he’s got plenty of reasons why he shouldn’t be banned for life.

Fessy put his hands on Josh during their blowout on ‘The Challenge’

The conflict between Fessy and Josh started brewing when the former college football player decided to throw another member of their Big Brother crew — Amber Borzotra —  into an elimination.

Things heated up when Fessy and Amber got in an argument over pizza — thanks to prompting from Tori Deal — and then Josh joined in the verbal fight. Security had to get involved as tempers flared, and then the incident came to an end when Fessy put his hand on Josh’s face.

Fessy was sent home, while everyone else got warnings

The next day, host T.J. Lavin sent Fessy home because he got physical. But Josh and Fessy’s partner Esther Agunbiade — who threw a drink in Amber’s face — were both given warnings and allowed to stay.

“It definitely sucked, but I understood,” Fessy told Entertainment Weekly. “They say you can’t put your hands on anybody and I touched Josh’s face with my hand so I broke the rules. It just sucks it was my friend too, like that shouldn’t have happened.”

‘The Challenge’ star explains why he shouldn’t be banned for life

After the episode that featured his disqualification aired, Fessy posted a message on Instagram that had fans wondering if MTV banned him from competing in future seasons of The Challenge.

“I would like to thank the network for giving me an opportunity to showcase my abilities,” Fessy captioned his Instagram post on Sept. 22, 2021. “Obviously, this is not how I wanted to go out but I take full responsibility for my actions. I consider myself a composed individual but it should’ve never escalated to this point and it’s on me at the end of the day.”

Taking responsibility for his actions was Fessy’s first attempt at lobbying for a spot in upcoming seasons. But he has more reasons why he shouldn’t be banned for life.

‘Messy’ Fessy thinks he’s proved himself

Fessy says that the first night after his disqualification was hard because he was thinking over everything that happened. But once he got home, he had peace of mind about it.

“As much as it sucked that I got kicked off, it was all under my control. I could have controlled my actions better and still been there,” Fessy explained.

He also noted on the official Challenge podcast that he believes he showed host T. J. Lavin that he remained calm and kept walking away. And this should be proof that he deserves another chance.

However, Lavin isn’t the decision maker. And even though Fessy has said multiple times that he takes “full responsibility” for his action, there always seems to be a “but.”

Will MTV invite him back to ‘The Challenge’?

While fans discussed Fessy’s behavior and his subsequent Instagram post on Reddit, some were concerned that MTV had already banned him for life. But others thought he would probably take a season or two off instead of being totally done with The Challenge.

“He was on Bananas’ Ringer podcast last week,” one Reddit user wrote. “He’s not done. I could see him taking a season off, but he’s not done.”

If Fessy does return to The Challenge, he says he’s learned a lot from his first few seasons. He understands that he “ruffled a lot of feathers” when he “came in early trying to make all these moves and waves.” Now, he sees that and understands that maybe it wasn’t the best strategy.

“But that’s how I play anything in life, any competition. I play to win,” Fessy said. “I don’t think a lot of people reciprocated that, my energy, they thought it was me being, I don’t know. Whatever. I definitely feel like I’ve got a better grasp on the game and my castmates now moving forward if I were to come back.”

The Challenge: Spies, Lies, and Allies airs Wednesdays on MTV.