Wes Bergmann teases The Challenge: USA season 2: 'I thought that TJ had set us up to fail'

Wes Bergmann knows a thing or two about overcoming adversity. The three-time Challenge champion more often than not has his back against the wall in the game, managing a massive target on his back while trying to win the long-running competition reality series. And after 17 years, he's succeeded, first on MTV by winning The Duel and Rivals 2, and then recently by winning All Stars 3 on Paramount+. So when he got the call to join season 2 of The Challenge: USA on CBS along with five other MTV vets, he had a good idea of what he was going to face.

"I had a fear that ends up being incredibly validated that they were all going to be insecure with our presence there, in particular the most successful of us," Bergmann tells EW. "Bananas and I stand out like sore thumbs, and on MTV they come after us for clout, which I consider to be the wrong reasons to come after us. But I went into this knowing that people were going to come after us for the right reasons, and for the most part, they were: We're threats. They should be coming after us, but what they're going to learn real quickly is the same reason they're coming after us is the same reason why we're so hard to get rid of."

Below, Bergmann breaks down what fans can expect from the new season, how he feels about that controversial USA final last season, and one cast member he was surprised to see. Plus, check out EW's exclusive sneak peek at the series premiere in the video above.

courtesy Paramount Wes Bergmann on 'The Challenge: USA'

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was your reaction when you got the call to go on the CBS version of The Challenge for the first time?

WES BERGMANN: I had a lot of questions. I am in love with The Challenge so it almost doesn't matter what channel it airs on, I'm going to try my best to be there. But my questions were, "How many of 'us' are going to be there, and what's different about this? What am I walking into?" It sounds too good to be true. And they were unable to answer most of those questions until we got there and found out ourselves.

So how did you make the decision to do it, without knowing any of those answers?

You just have to trust that your job is to extend the life of The Challenge and to make it as entertaining as it can possibly be by giving it everything that you've got in every area: the politics, the athleticism, the interviews. But it does kind of stink because there's no way to really mentally prepare without all the information. And we definitely 100 percent did not know what we were getting ourselves into. I kind of wish that I had — I would've done things differently.

When you got there and saw the cast and that there were only six MTV vets surrounded by CBS stars, what was your reaction?

When I saw the makeup of how many people were from CBS, specifically from Big Brother and Survivor, I thought that [host] TJ [Lavin] had set us up to fail. On those shows — and bless their little hearts — they use any little kind of demographic of sorts to create tribes and alliances and anything where that makes them like-minded so they can band together. And as they should. But when you look at it in a CBS vs. MTV thing, we were completely outnumbered. When you look at it from a Survivor vs. MTV thing, we were completely outnumbered. And then you add in the fact that we don't really know who essentially any of them are, and they have game tape on us for the last 20 years, it was debatably the most set up we, as a group, have ever been before.

And you could tell that there was this big insecurity or chip on the shoulder of the Survivor and Big Brother players who were kind of like, "This is our channel and we want to prove that we can play this and we can be better than the Challengers." We don't really have that chip on our shoulder. We're prepared to work with anybody, we don't really need to work along our show lines, but we had to find a way to either fight that preconceived chip on their shoulder or flip it somehow, and that will prove to be just one of the many hurdles that we've got to get over.

But there are also a ton of CBS stars who have been on the MTV version of The Challenge with you. Did those lines start to blur?

Yeah. Well first off, it wasn't a ton of them. If it was a ton, I would've used that to our advantage. That crew was almost the scariest because it was challenging to determine which side they were going to be on. They could either be on our side, they could be on their side, or they could play both sides, or they could play none of the sides. They were actually even more dangerous than the ones that were clearly against us, and at the very least, that made them the biggest of the X factors. They in particular were set up better than anyone I've ever seen before, especially because none of them are previous champions, so they don't go in there with those crowns that everybody wants to take.

Who were you surprised to see return this season?

I'm really surprised Josh is back. I mean, he's not very good. He has a really long track record of sucking at this. And the fans rightfully dislike him. If he's not liked on the fan side, and he is not good at the game side, I don't understand exactly what he's doing there. But he's goofy, so maybe he'll provide some goofy moments.

Did he continue to try to force a rivalry with you?

Yeah. I'm a charitable man, so if he wants it so bad, maybe I just need to give in and give it to him.

When you watched the first season of The Challenge: USA, what did you think of how all the rookies played the game without any vets around?

There's a lot of people from my camp, if you will, that want to be overly critical of how they played. But my colleagues have to be real careful, because my colleagues all sucked their first season too. Other than me — I'm the only one that was phenomenal right from the start. And I'm the one sitting back saying, "You've got to give people time." We're not faking, or lying, or exaggerating when we say it's the hardest game in the world, and so for people to come into it for the very first time and to make some kind of "rookie mistakes" should be expected. They're going to learn from those and they're going to come back stronger. I personally found USA season 1 to be very entertaining. I thought there was some great gameplay and some people that had potential there, that if they came back for a sophomore or junior year that they would be top 10 contenders amongst some of the best people that have ever played.

How did your most recent loss, on World Championships, affect how you prepared for this season?

Actually, not at all. How I lost on World Championships was one of those ones that was just a dumb mistake on my part, followed by a really ill-engineered elimination round where there was no chance for my partner and I to win, regardless of how it was played. I take all responsibility for our loss, but it was just such an anomaly where I shouldn't take that lesson and overthink any of the other stuff, because I was fully prepared to win World Championships. I just made a dumb mistake. Not getting in my head and just going back with the same kind of mental and physical preparation is all I had to do.

How did the CBS cast compare to what you're used to dealing with from the MTV/Paramount cast?

They are a lot more mature than the MTV side, so I related to them more. They are just further along in their lives and their careers, in the same way that the MTV group eventually will get there, as all of us do as we age. Their maturity extended to the in between times, which made it more enjoyable for an old head like me to be around. But also, they're gamers, and some of them have some really, really good athletic backgrounds, and how they play the game politically, they think several moves ahead. Put it this way: Their game social prowess is as strong, if not stronger, than even some of the best Challengers out there. Some of them are literal winners of Big Brother and Survivor for a reason, and they were able to take those skills that are more important on those particular shows and bring them to ours, and it was impressive to watch.

There was a lot of controversy surrounding the USA finale, with all the DQ's and inconsistent rulings. Was there any discussion in the house about that this season, or did you notice any differences in how the rules were conveyed during challenges or how the players were acting as a result?

None of the people that wanted to publicly bitch about how the final went down wanted to do so in a public forum with anybody that could defend themselves. In other words, you would hear a one-off podcast, or you'd hear someone go on a rant on Instagram alone. No one complained an ounce when they were in front of people that could explain the context of what was going on. They were ill-prepared to run TJ's final and they got their butts kicked, and they were looking for every single excuse that they could possibly come up with to answer why they performed so poorly in the final.

I do not think that you're ever going to see that again — not because things are now cleaned up and will be run differently, because they won't. They're going to be run just as perfectly as they always have, except the cast members will be more prepared. They underestimated what the end was going to look like, and not only was it a very typically brutal final, but then the weather got atypically challenging.

They didn't complain when they were around us because we'd be like, "There's nothing abnormal about that. That's how it's done." And then they'd say, "This part isn't fair." And then we'd ask a couple of follow-up questions and they'd want to change the subject, so they don't have anything to stand on. Every single one of those players, if they came back and did a final again, they would do substantially better. They just didn't know what was going on and they entered into some of the hardest two days of their life and they got their butts handed to them, much like we all do when go through any final. It's designed to break you physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and it did just to that. When I saw that, even I brushed up [on sudoku puzzles] myself.

How does this season play out for you?

You're going to see me in full-blown Wes mode. All the things that you either love or hate about me will be on full display. This season, because of the games, because of the characters, because of the alliances, because of the things that we had for us or against us, it was a nice canvas to paint a beautiful picture on.

There are about 10+ competitors this season that are as good, if not better than, some of the best who have ever played. They have come in with exponentially more knowledge on the history of the game and how it's played, and they've got so much more experience now that they've, at the very least, done more research, and at the very most, played an entire season themselves. Now they're coming in ready and raring to go. I didn't feel like I was playing with a bunch of rookies, let's put it that way. It will 100 percent be one of the best seasons of all time.

The Challenge: USA season 2 will kick off with a two-part premiere, beginning Thursday, Aug. 10, at 10 p.m. ET/PT and continuing Sunday, Aug. 13, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CBS and streaming on Paramount+. New episodes will air twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays, for the first three weeks, before moving to just Thursdays on Aug. 31.

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