The Challenge: All Stars Rivals’ winners talk unaired injuries, proposal, more

This article contains spoilers for The Challenge All Stars: Rivals finale.

Adam Larson and Steve Meinke couldn’t be stopped on The Challenge: All Stars Rivals — although the rest of the players certainly tried their best to eliminate them.

The two Road Rules veterans were thrown into more than half of the season’s eliminations, but the formidable duo just kept on winning. And while they started the final off on a low note with a third and last place finish in checkpoints, they scratched and clawed their way back to their former streak to clinch the win in the very last checkpoint. It was a photo finish, but Larson and Meinke beat out Shane Landrum and Da’Vonne Rogers to become The Challenge: All Stars Rivals champions, and both chose to split the money rather than steal it from their partner.

To celebrate, Larson revealed in his confessional that he was going to propose to his girlfriend, fellow Challenge competitor Averey Tressler, who he met on All Stars 4. He even told her through the TV to look for him down on one knee as the episode airs. Meanwhile, Meinke was happy to make it through in (almost) one piece, as he was dealing with multiple injuries that were not shown in the episodes.

Below, Larson and Meinke break down their winning season, every injury of Meinke’s that wasn’t on TV, whether Larson has proposed to Tressler by now, and more.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Congratulations on winning, especially after five eliminations. That is quite an impressive season.

STEVE MEINKE: Much appreciated. I think I was already kind of wet behind the ears from the last [All Stars] when it came to going through challenges and eliminations, but eliminating more people, I guess. This time I came out winning, so it came out with a much, much bigger prize and a much happier Steve. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted at that point in time, but grinning ear to ear.

ADAM LARSON: Thank you. It was a long time in the making, I’d say. I feel like people have been giving me way too many pats on the back. Steve and I, we were patient, we were kind with each other. We had good communication. We did it. Thank you very much for the accolades, but also it is kind of surreal — you want to minimize it, right? Because I know I’m not one of the greats, nor will I ever get to be one of the greats, nor will I even ever probably get to compete on a flagship. It’s like that ego part of me really was like, “Oh man, if I was in my 30s again, I would love to give this a shot.” Instead, I get to relive it on the couch with Hunter and Harlow and Ave[rey Tressler].

The girls love that they have Challenge parents. I want to motivate other people, but most importantly, my own kids, just to open up their eyes and see what’s out there. That’s what Road Rules did for me in Morocco and Spain half a lifetime ago. And I went into All Stars 4 broken. I wasn’t even an ounce of the man who I thought I once was, but I was completely rebuilding myself [to] live a life as a single dad, where parenting is my priority, and I no longer am being selfish about everything that I want, but living for the next generation. So maybe I was just in the right place at the right time to go back and do All Stars.

LARSON: I did not know that Bunim Murray would be so kind as to involve my family as much as they have this season. Just thinking about my dad and having the girls on the other line, [Larson starts to tear up] it’s enough to keep you going. What I will say is that the girls getting to see themselves and see me talking to them really mean a lot to them. Selfishly, I just want those moments captured and I’m so glad that I get to watch it with them. I did not know that they were going to air those kind things I said about Aves, and so we already had something planned, which we’re going to keep planned between Averey and I.

However, she is my everything, and I’ve asked her to marry me about a thousand times. She’s living with us, and she is the girls’ mom. She jokes about that she’s going to ask me to marry her, to the girls. I don’t know if she’ll see that moment [because] we’ll be in an RV park, but I know that even if we don’t watch the episode that her phone’s going to blow up. So I’m like, how do we make this into a beautiful family moment and then still have the proposal as well? I want to do something absolutely amazing for [her], and so I don’t want to cheapen the proposal at all, which is why I’m kind of thinking of doing both. I am so blessed to have won All Stars 4, in meeting her — not that I wouldn’t have wanted to beat Laurel and Cara Maria and Steve in a final, I’m still bitter about that, but when I left with Aves, I won.

Steve, you seemed to be battling an injury during the second half of the final. How bad was it?

MEINKE: Can you specify, because there’s probably about three or four things that are going on. I haven’t watched the last episode yet, was I limping or did I have my shoes off?

MEINKE: I suffer from peripheral neuropathy, and so anything with extreme weather changes or extreme heat or a change in heart rate, my fingers, my fingernails, and my toenails start kind of going crazy and it feels like there’s electric shocks going through them. If you’re bored and you want to be grossed out, just look up COVID toes. I started losing two of my toenails well before the final, and one decided to finally come out during a final and all my toes were starting to blister. You see in the campfire, Adam and I going back and forth, my feet are swelling — they’ll go from anywhere from a size nine-and-a-half to a size 12 in a span of 40 minutes — so the last half hour I was running back and forth barefoot because my toenails were bleeding.

And then the sand dune, when we were running down, I popped my quad where it attaches to my hip, right on the third or fourth step going down that hill. Instant explosion, I strained my quad, and I was done for the rest of the day. I’ve also got shoddy knees and shoddy calves. Everything’s just kind of bad on me. Sam had a significant knee injury, and I gave her one of my heavy duty knee braces, but also in doing so, my knee was compensating and getting hurt with that. I’m still going through physical therapy for it, so that’s fun. I also have a disintegrated disc and a slipped vertebrae that I found out recently after the show as well, so that contributed to a lot. I have no feeling in my entire right leg, for a while.

MEINKE: Adam and I were pretty adept to Frank’s work behind the scenes pretty much from the get go. He’s a very intelligent, charming, athletic guy, but it’s a team. And Adam and I knew that we could get by with a lot based on our prowess and our communication and our skill level, and Frank was not able to do that. Frank and I, we were pretty congenial with each other, but I didn’t know as much to the extent of how much he was trying to get us.

LARSON: I had the power to put him in multiple times and make that move. I chose to make different moves that I think aligned the Nicole and Melissa partnership stronger with Steve and I. I know that he’s convinced that he’s the smartest person in the room, and I tip my hat to him for that. But I do feel like sometimes, whether you’re playing Traitors and you’re whatever this villain thing is, sometimes it can play against you. Now I’ll always see him for who he is and know that he’s a game player, more so than [being there for] the experience.

When it got to the final [elimination], because Frank chose to lie to me the night before, and all I wanted was the truth if we were going in or not, I never forgave him. He played the best game, but we saw him for who he was from the very get-go. Steve never trusted him. But I guess they weren’t enough of a threat. But I do respect him. I respect the game that he played, and gosh, I almost would prefer to have a rivalry with him so that they could match us up.

LARSON: I thought we blew everybody out of the water. I thought we were off and embracing before Da’Vonne and Shane even got theirs, but it was so close, they could have just stayed on the teeter-totter thing until it came down or whatever. We called for check probably six times, and within those times, Da’Vonne and Shane had already started calling for checks too, but we definitely won.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.