“The Challenge”'s Aviv reveals what really happened with footsie-gate, her DQ, injury, and more

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Challenge: Battle of the Eras, season 40, episode 15, "Thinking Thin Era."

Almost 20 years after Aviv Melmed Bruno won her rookie season of The Challenge, she finally returned for season 40 and proved she still has what it takes.

While she was sent home in this Wednesday's episode after DQing in the challenge and losing the physical cage match elimination against Jenny West, Aviv performed well physically and socially all season long. She almost made it another final, but unfortunately got lost in some dark tunnels on her way there.

Below, the Fresh Meat champ breaks down her impressive run this season after an 18-year hiatus from The Challenge, what really happened during footsie-gate, her injury, and more.

Related: The Challenge: Fresh Meat winner Aviv finally returned for season 40 to prove she's not 'boring'

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You came into this season wanting to prove that you weren't who the edit made you seem on Fresh Meat. Now that you've seen all the episodes, how do you feel about how this season went for you?

AVIV MELMED BRUNO: The first episode, I had more airtime than I did all of Fresh Meat, and I won that one. My bigger issue was just all the feedback was like, "She's so boring." Of course there's people that still think I'm boring — which is fine, I get it, because I'm not dishing out the drama. But I'm anything but boring. I think we're past that — you got your drama with the footsie. They're always like, "She's the voice of reason and she's so mature." Look, you need a normal-ish person in order to make everyone look that much crazier. So you're welcome, everyone.

Speaking of the footsie drama, there was a lot that we didn't see in the episode of that blow-up. What actually went down on that bus?

A lot went down before the bus, and then the argument was continuing on the bus. I had an injury on my foot, so after the challenges, I would always rest my foot — and I was actually talking to Cara and Johnny was sitting across from me and he tapped me. He did it right in front of Michele, and Michele had made some comment about touching each other. At that point, the cameras weren't even there. But the minute that comment was made and they started fighting, the cameras came to the back of the bus, and they started filming.

Johnny and I, we act like children sometimes and were mimicking the footsie thing. They used that footage because they didn't have the footage from the beginning when he was tapping me. Frankly, these two were fighting nonstop at this point in the game, everyone was kind of over it. You see Rachel not get involved, I don't get involved. We were all just like, "Oh my God, can we move on?" And then when they started sort of alluding to affairs and marriage, I was like, "Can everyone just shut up?" You get to the end of these shows and everyone is just mentally broken. There were a lot of breakdowns at this point.

Related: The Challenge's Josh says he's 'taking a step back' from the Vacation Alliance after season 40

In the past couple of weeks, that moment was blown up even more with Devin calling out Rachel for not getting involved. What do you think about how it's escalated on social media?

I am shocked that people are invested emotionally after the show, but I get it. It's fun, I guess, for people. I don't like some of the stuff going back and forth because it's not true and people know it's not true — I'm talking about people that are on the show that either were there or weren't there. But Rachel is such a feminist. And you know that the show's edited. You know that they could take a smirk from any point in time and make it look like it's alluding to that.

And guess what? It tells a good story. It tells the story that she's on Johnny's side. And it also tells a story that the whole thing's kind of ridiculous. But to take a statement like that and be like, "She wasn't sticking up for this and that" ... the people that know, know. The people that want to continue spreading rumors and talking about it because it's fun and gossipy, that's what they're doing, that's what they're always going to do. I just don't like people impeding on other people's personal lives or values or things like that.

But at the end of the day, I guess we expose ourselves to that and sign up for that in some weird way. My husband's getting eggplants and bananas on his Instagram. My advice is just try to have fun with it, laugh about it. Because as long as your real life is secure, then the rest is just bulls---.

Related: The Challenge's Josh shuts down rumors of season 40 fling with Laurel: 'We are not friends'

What actually happened in this challenge when you DQed?

It was not good. I took a wrong turn and went a thousand miles in the wrong direction and ended up getting lost in the tunnels, which I only realized a few minutes in when I started hearing bottles and trash and leaves under me. Then I had a mini panic attack because I realized I could be anywhere. Eventually I saw light. Whatever barrier they had — they said it was sticks or something — either wasn't there or someone had knocked over. I had felt something that felt like a stick on the ground, but I didn't see anything. I was imagining when they said barrier, there's a board, it's boarded up, you can't get in. I made an executive decision to go really fast in a direction that happened to be the wrong direction, and that's it. Then I got DQed for it. It sucked.

That moment where they show two sticks propped up blocking the tunnel makes it seem like you knocked them down. Was that creative editing or did that actually happen?

Here's the thing that I will tell everyone, we couldn't see anything in the tunnel. Anything that you guys can see, those are the night vision cameras, so we couldn't see that. If something was knocked down, you just don't know, you knocked it down without seeing it. When I say it was dark, it was pitch black. You were using your hands to feel around. And there were even parts where you were going down, so you had to put your hands in front of you and around you at all times to kind of figure out where to go.

Related: The Challenge's Devin calls out 'pathetic' gaslighting by Johnny 'Bananas' and Josh's 'scared' game

So it's not like in the moment, you were like, bam, "These sticks have got to go."

Exactly. When I saw that part, I was like, "Yeah, okay, it's real obvious now. Thank you. I'll just take this stick and I'll take this stick and f--- your path. I'm taking my own route." The route that I took actually went to the finish line, so I thought I should get bonus points for skipping through all the bulls--- and heading right to the final puzzle, but no one agreed with me.

Did you still try to solve the puzzle at the end then?

They didn't let me. People were so confused. I was like, "What way do I go? Answer me!" And I still had my camcorder, and at one point I was like, "Why the f--- am I still holding this? I'm putting this down." They had me run one direction, then they had me run another direction, I mean, I literally clocked probably at least a mile of running back and forth, all before they made the decision to stop me and tell me I'm DQed. It was just insane. I was sweating my ass off. I'm like, "Okay, while you guys have this conversation, can I get some water?" So they brought me water.

At least you didn't give up and kept going.

I was about to jump back in the hole. But TJ's like, "You can't do it." I was like, "Just let me, I don't even care about the time, just let me go again." I hope that everyone is entertained and can at least get a good laugh out of it because otherwise I'm not sure what to tell everyone.

Related: Derrick breaks down The Challenge season 40 fight with Cory (and Jordan): 'I was getting picked on'

That elimination against Jenny looked brutal. Did you walk away with any injuries?

No, but I'm sure Jenny was beat up from me on her back. Jenny's like, "What is this thing? Get off of me." I knew that was going to be a tough one for me. I'd gone kind of back and forth on what else can I do? Can I climb the cage? Maybe I climb the cage and jump. If anyone has any other ideas on what I could have done, I'm very open to feedback.

When you jumped on Jenny’s back, do you think Jordan’s comparison to the "Bananas backpack" moment was fair? Because you actually took down Jenny, whereas Bananas couldn’t do anything but get thrown into a barrel when he was on CT’s back.

Yeah, I actually knocked her down. Nice try, Jordan. She was on the ground. She was eating sand for a moment. Also I was facing forward, not backward. Just saying. Thank God I took her down for a moment too, because that was the only moment where I was like, "Yes, I did something!"

Tell me more about your foot injury we saw you struggling with for most of the season. What was the official diagnosis?

It started out as plantar fasciitis, which is the tightening of the fascia. One day while I was sprinting, I felt a pop, and then I couldn't walk at all. I couldn't put any pressure on my heel or my foot. At that moment I was like, "Something's really wrong. We're going to ice it, we're going to get it checked out, but we're not going to really tell anyone how bad it is because we don't want to get kicked off the show." I had done some therapy there, and I was on meds and I had to have a cortisone shot after the mini final — which was awful, because the injury had just happened before that.

When I came home, I went to an orthopedic surgeon, and he is like, "It's completely torn, you don't have anything there." Basically all the fascia on the bottom of my foot had ruptured, and that's what allows you a lot of movement in your foot. And then I also had a heel spur, which I guess got worse because my fascia was protecting it or something. I ended up in a boot for three weeks. I'm actually still doing physical therapy. I started running again, so I'm trying to build my distances. But it's definitely still there. I have to be careful and I need to rehab it more.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

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The Challenge: Battle of the Eras airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on MTV.

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