Why Deontay Wilder Self-Eliminated on ‘The Traitors‘
Professional boxer Deontay Wilder's shocking exit from The Traitors sesaon 2 episode 4 left viewers everywhere truly s-t-u-n-n-e-d. And to say his fellow contestants likely felt the same way is a serious understatement. When the remaining cast members arrived to breakfast the morning after eliminations, the athlete's portrait was marked with a red "X," and to everyone's surprise, the game moved forward with no mention of his disappearance. So what exactly happened to Deontay and what was the reason for his departure? Here's everything we know:
The end of episode 3 was intense
During the nail-biting episode, we saw Deontay rally his fellow contestants at the second Round Table to banish Dancing with the Stars alum Maksim Chmerkovskiy, who was the only person to stand up for Peppermint last week with his vote.
Despite the boxing champion being absolutely positive that Maks was a Traitor, when the dancing pro revealed himself to be a Faithful, Deontay got visibly emotional. While lying on a couch after the Round Table, he said, "I don't know how much more I can go on. My heart. I can't do this no more."
Fast-forward to the top of episode 4, and host Alan Cumming revealed in a voice-over that the athlete had opted to quit the game, leaving viewers everywhere devastated.
Here's the reason Deontay likely quit the show
The boxing champion really seemed to take Maks' exit to heart after he and the other contestants wound up eliminating him—a move that definitely got to Deontay. Plus, the fact that he and the DWTS pro were so close likely made the elimination that much harder to reconcile.
During a season 2 press junket earlier this month, Deontay revealed to Us Weekly that, "Maks was one of the first guys that I met and I really kicked it off really, really well with him." "And we really built a certain type of friendship, a bond, and to be able to bear false witness against him when I really felt that he was [a Traitor] because he started acting different and all that. We can go off of certain emotions, certain things that people do or whatever. You really have to have a watchful eye of things," he added.
We kinda should have seen this coming
During an interview conducted with Screen Rant before episode 4 became available, Deontay shared that, for him, the hardest thing about being part of the show was causing people pain. "I’m a people’s person and I love people…we all need each other," the athlete explained. "You get a lot of traitors in my profession, so I’m used that world."
While speaking with the outlet, he also opened up about feeling as though he would have done better as a Traitor: "I think my background, my space of where I come from it fits me better."
"This game was definitely harder than I thought it would be," he mused during the aforementioned Us Weekly convo. "I thought it was trying to figure out [who] were the Traitors, and being that you have so many more Faithfuls than the Traitors, that it would be kind of easy to try to figure it out. But being on this show, it really struck some childhood trauma from me that I didn’t expect."
"Although my profession is the hurt business, as I call it. But as a man, as Deontay Wilder, as a person, I’m a loving, caring guy that I love everybody and I want to see everybody succeed in life. And I think you got the best of me being on the show," he added.
We're not crying, you are!!!
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