Australian Ninja Warrior‘s Troy Cullen and The Bachelor Australia alum Kiki Morris have been crowned as the winners of The Challenge Australia 2022.
The winning male and female duo (yeah, it’s problematic AF) will go on to compete at The Challenge: Global Championship competition. Fingers crossed the international version will pull in better viewership ratings!
They’ve also nabbed $100,000 each in prize money and probs a sh*tload of new Insta followers which is the most valuable take-home for a washed-up reality star LBH!
Troy and Kiki beat out finalists Brooke Jowett, Brittany Hockley, Conor Curran and Ciarran Stott.
Host Brihony Dawson announced Kiki and Troy as the winners (BTW, we totally called it!), having achieved the shortest overall challenge times.
The Challenge Australia winner Troy Cullen
It’s little surprise that Troy took out the inaugural win, with many of the physical challenges being right up his alley.
The Ninja Warrior alum won the final challenge with a whopping 20 minutes gap.
“My friends and family are going to be so proud; this has been an absolutely awesome experience,” Troy said.
Come on, they had to compete in the mud during the November 22 episode, and his nickname is literally “Dirt Ninja”.
Plus, you know, the whole “professional athlete” background didn’t hurt either.
The Challenge Australia winner Kiki Morris
Kiki is far more of a surprise victor, but she’s proven herself as a front-runner from day one.
In the final comp, Kiki won with a nine-minute gap, beating Australian Survivor’s Brooke Jowett.
“To win this right now is probably the most important, exciting thing I’ve ever done,” the 32-year-old said.
She continued: “This wasn’t just a modelling competition or a beauty pageant, it was the most gruelling mental and physical thing I’ve ever done. I’ve proven myself; I’ve succeeded and I’ve won.”
What will The Challenge Australia 2022 winners Kiki Morris and Troy Cullen do with their prize money?
Chatting with Yahoo! Lifestyle following their victory, the winning pair dished that they both plan on using the prize money to build futures with their respective partners.
Speaking of her bodybuilder bae Jorge Darek, Kiki said she’s planning on moving to his homeland Spain full-time.
“My partner lives in Spain so I’m there every month pretty much for a week or two,” Kiki explained. “I’m doing a long-distance relationship with a lot of travel, and I will be moving there full time with him.”
She even added that they’ve “been talking marriage and all that kind of stuff” and EEEK! Another reality wedding is totes on the way!
Kiki continued: “As much as I love Australia, it’s time for me to really take this next step in my life and I can’t wait to be with him in the near future. So in the next couple of months that will be what’s on the cards.
“And I need to start taking some Spanish lessons, so a big chunk of [the prize money] might go to some Spanish lessons I think as well,” she added.
Troy confessed that he’s currently renovating his house “so it will go a long way in paying for that”.
“And I want to travel the world, so there’ll be a good portion of the money going towards travel as well.”
The Challenge Australia 2022 finale copped record-low ratings
While its star-studded cast may have intended to draw in viewers en masse, The Challenge Australia‘s ratings plummeted from the get-go.
In fact, the inaugural season finale reached just 10,000 viewers in total, with “zero” fans tuning in from Brisbane, according to news.com.au. #Awkward!
While these numbers are dismal AF, ratings figures are rounded to the nearest thousand. As such, The Challenge seemingly returned zero viewers in Brisbane, meaning between zero and 499 people actually watched the episode.
These figures don’t take into account delayed viewing, however.
Huge congrats to Kiki and Troy!
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