'The Challenge: USA' Host TJ Lavin Compares CBS Competition to Flagship Series and Talks Trivia

The only downside to TJ Lavin's 17-year (so far) gig as host of The Challenge is that he has to leave his family, including his dogs, for long stretches of the year to fly around the world for new seasons of the MTV-turned-Paramount+ reality competition series. And over time, that gig has only gotten bigger, as the franchise has grown to include an All-Stars spin-off of the flagship series (also streaming on Paramount+) and a new CBS edition titled The Challenge: USA, which is really just the start of a subsequent world championship event.

But even though Lavin tells Metacritic with a laugh that his dogs are mad at him when he returns home only for a couple of days before flying out to somewhere else, he wouldn't have it any other way.

"I'm in it for the long haul, 100%. I absolutely love doing it. I love being here," Lavin says of the franchise.

The professional BMX rider got his Challenge start in 2005 when he hosted Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Gauntlet 2 and has been at the center of almost 30 seasons of the flagship series since, plus three seasons of All-Stars (so far) and now The Challenge: USA, which premieres July 6 at 9:30 p.m. on CBS.

As a host, Lavin is known for his disdain for quitters, often sternly warning challengers about the seriousness of the competition, and also his joyful laugh when challengers offer off-the-wall answers in the trivia events. Although he has to remain neutral and therefore can't vocally cheer challengers on from the sidelines as he watches them compete, he admits that he doesn't want to see anybody "get smoked and not have fun." So, occasionally, including on The Challenge: USA, Lavin is able to offer a few behind-the-scenes pointers, just to make sure challengers can be seen as "competitors and not just layups."

"There were a couple of times that I helped teach them how to swim. I was like, 'Listen, you got to do this, this, this; that'll help your swimming tremendously.' They didn't really pay attention too much, but I went through the motions with them a couple of times, trying to help," he shares of The Challenge: USA.

The flagship series sees the majority of its season's competitors returning from previous rounds, which means Lavin has gotten to know many of them very well throughout the years. Even if they are not close personally, he knows how they compete, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and what baggage they are walking into the competition with from past relationships and rivalries. That was not the case on The Challenge: USA, which brought together 28 brand-new players to this game from four other reality shows: nine individuals from Big Brother, eight each from Love Island and Survivor, and three from The Amazing Race.

Other contestants from these four reality shows have competed on the flagship Challenge series before, against veteran Challengers, but on The Challenge: USA, everyone started on even ground when it came to the show itself. Of course, though, some of these players came in with alliances or exes from their own shows (such as Big Brother's The Cookout and Love Island's Cashel Barnett and Kyra Green), which affected gameplay right from the beginning.

"I didn't do too much research. I wanted it to be a surprise and I didn't want to know these people from their other shows because then I'd have some preconceived notions," Lavin admits. "So, I was trying to go into this thing fully blind, and I really did. And I quickly got educated at the first challenge."

Lavin notes that "anybody that knows the show knows [that first challenge] is gonna be a heavy-hitter right out the gate." Because of those expectations from long-time, diehard fans, he adds that The Challenge: USA had to take advantage of its decades of history and include "really famous games...especially [in] elimination rounds" or risk disappointing a core part of the audience.

But he also knows that being on a new network, with new faces, there is the potential to tap into an audience that isn't up-to-date on what The Challenge proper is doing lately, and so, he feels The Challenge: USA is also an opportunity to show that audience "what The Challenge is all about."

The first challenge within the new series does that by combining a physically-exerting exercise (rappelling down a building) with a mental one (in addition to the fear of heights some may have to overcome, they have to do a math problem on the way down). And if they don't get the math problem right when they are back on solid ground, they have to run up more than 20 stories of stairs to try it all again.

It's not a show that's for the faint of heart — nor the unfit.

"There were several times where I watched them and I was like, 'You don't belong here.' And it was always men. Every woman on the show gave it all they had," Lavin says of The Challenge: USA competitors.

"There's equalizers in almost every challenge to where those guys have to be smart, too. They can't just go in there and run everyone over. But there's also some things that people were really scared [of] and it was just unbelievable how bad some of the swimming was and some of the things like swinging and then having to do a little action hero on things that you do on The Challenge. The fact that some of them couldn't get it done and were just so bad, I couldn't believe it," he continues.

There will be no spoilers from Lavin (nor from Metacritic!) on who those fails come from, but the reality host was more than willing to sing the praises of some competitors.

Lavin says that going into the new show he assumed the players from Survivor would have the best shot at being "able to find that last gear that you need to be a Challenger" — and some of them, such as Danny McCray (who also played professional football) and Sarah Lacina proved they had the chops he thought they would.

"I watched him run, and it was a specimen, a thing of beauty, to see him run. When you see somebody do something that they're supposed to do in life, it's a beautiful thing and that's what I saw when I saw him run. I was just so impressed with his athleticism," he says of McCray.

But he was pleasantly surprised by Challengers across all of the four previously shows, most notably Big Brother.

Lavin specifically calls out that CBS competition program's Kyland Young, Tiffany Mitchell, and Alyssa Lopez, the latter of whom he calls a "full-on Challenger" after this one season and says he "would love to see her on the regular show as well."

What makes a strong Challenger for Lavin is how hard someone tries. After all, he knows it can be hard to really train for such a show, even if, like Young, you do your homework and watch previous seasons. New Challengers don't know what physical games will be brought back or what new ones will be cooked up, and even when it comes to trivia, "What do you study? It's really hard to figure out what they're going to ask," he says. "That's really just a, 'How are you under pressure?' situation because you could be the smartest person in the world, but then all of a sudden, I ask you what language Australians speak, and you say Dutch because you're hanging over water pretty 35-feet [in the air] or something."

How hard someone tries on a show like The Challenge may come down to what they think they have to prove, which can help keep the franchise fresh all of these years later — something Lavin may not need to want to keep coming back, but something The Challenge: USA still offered something fresh anyway.

"It's a completely different vibe because in the flagship show, there's so many heavy hitters that are used to being here and doing this," he says. "They're kind of like truck drivers now, maybe: They're just gritty and badass. The CBS people are the sweetest, nicest, best-looking people I've ever seen in my life as a group. It's crazy. Every single one of these people is a model, and some of them do really good!"