EXCLUSIVE: Challenge Mania Host Scott Yager Responds to Ashley Mitchell’s Twitter Attack

by | Oct 15, 2019

Scott Yager Ashley Mitchell Challenge Mania

Ashley Mitchell fired shots at Scott Yager and Derrick Kosinski, hosts of the Challenge Mania podcast, this week on Twitter. We’ll run down the entire Twitter exchange, navigating through all the various tangents, and provide an exclusive statement from Scott. It all started at the Challenge Mania Live event that took place in Philadelphia over the weekend. Scott asked the audience if anyone likes Natalie ‘Ninja’ Duran and the audience responded with a deafening silence. A video of the incident was posted to Twitter by an attendee garnering Ashley’s attention. Ashley replied to the video, “I hate that these people just use this platform to bash other people. That’s why I would never. I don’t need to talk about people I’ve never met .” 

This seemed to open the flood gates to a string of Tweets expressing her opinion on Challenge Mania Live as a whole. 

She goes as far as to say this is a bullying tactic used to hurt cast members who are not present to defend themselves. 

A fan Tweeted this in response to the original video. Ashley responded in agreeance. 

A fan insinuated that Ninja deserved the hate for what she did to Turbo last season. A classic Challenge fan take on justice and “KaRmA.” This was Ashley’s reply. 

She reiterates her confusion for going personal and not sticking to game related topics.  

She also claims they have done something similar to Amanda at a former event. 

Initially fans assumed she was referring to the cast members on the panel but Ashley quickly corrected that assumption. 

The Challenge Mania Live panel was stacked with MTV powerhouses: Aneesa Ferreira, Tony Raines, Marie Roda, Jemmye Carroll and Kailah Nicole. They too assumed Ashley was referring to the panel. Sadly Marie has deleted her Twitter along with all the evidence of her response. If you have a screenshot please email it to saniacpodcast@gmail.com. We do however have Ashley’s response. 

At this point, Scott caught on to the mess and chimed in with understandable confusion. 


According to Ashley the Challenge Mania hosts “get on a bandwagon” when it comes to hating cast members. 



Scott responded clarifying what Ashley may see as “bandwagon” behavior. 

He also points out some hypocrisy in her logic. Do you think her Challenge Mania interviews have gone too far?

@RyanJohn___ prompted this response from Scott by Tweeting, “Scott, don’t waste your time on her! Everyone that was at the event on Sunday knows the real story. Ironic that the head of the lavender ladies bully brigade wants to talk about being nice to others.”



Scott was taking shots left, right and center last night with a fan even claiming he is bias towards the very people fans are claiming he was bullying at Challenge Mania Live. 

Scott defending the bias claims against him. 



Fans even had him on the defensive about his cast selections for the panels. Coordinating cast can be a pain in the behind. It makes no sense to assume Scott hand picks the cast based on his own biases. It makes much more sense to assume Scott maximizes the cast he has available based on location, scheduling and every other finicky detail that goes into event planning. 

While Ashley went off to dinner, Scott provided some much needed receipts from his episode with Ashley last year. 

Some fans called Scott out for being “shady” by posting this episode. He responded by clarifying his intentions and recapping relevant parts of the episode. 



The fans did not relent and continued ripping into Scott. @mtv_truth Tweeted “Pretty disappointed @SHOTOFYAGER used his platform to stand up there and do this. It’s his platform though, if that’s what he wants to do with it, then he can. Just seemed out of character for him. Not just Twitter fingers at that point…let’s get a whole damn crowd. SMH.” This turned into a back and forth and here are Scott’s responses. 

Ashley, having returned from dinner, logged onto Twitter to see this video Tweet from a fan account. 

Her response:

After all the dust settled, we reached out to Scott for the exclusive and here’s what he had to say. 

“It’s unfortunate that she feels that way about me and claims that she always has. I really enjoyed her two appearances on our podcast in 2018 (episodes 30 and 71) and have fond memories of our times speaking, both on the air and briefly off it when scheduling, etc. I apologize to our audience, because our chats were always fun and lively & it appears it’s something I said during the outro of her last appearance that has lead to at least the majority of her ill will towards me. I truly had no idea just how harsh these feelings were until reading her Tweets this weekend. I texted her the second the Final Reckoning Finale aired, even though I also consider Hunter a friend, and said Congrats. Regarding CML [Challenge Mania Live] Ninja Clip: What’s sad about this particular instance, with the Ninja clip, is that it made a lot of people think that I was trying to purposely get the crowd to react negatively. Not only would I not do that to Ninja, but when I ask and involve the crowd in our shows it’s not to get a certain reaction. It’s genuinely to get their opinion. I don’t know what that opinion is, what the breakdown is among the crowd, or how it’s going to audibly come through until I ask. We do this at all of our shows and ask about 3-4 different people or events per show. This wasn’t some new thing. That’s what our shows are. They are an interactive experience where the fans can have a voice for once and participate in a discussion with cast-members. I have no idea how they are going to respond and sometimes they boo or stay silent when asked about people that I like and respect very much. That’s part of their right to their opinion. It doesn’t matter that I think Ninja is great for the show and that I have a good relationship with her. When I asked the crowd, that’s how they reacted.

That’s not us “dragging her” or even the crowd dragging her. The audience there gets that. The problem with taking a clip and adding the caption “dragging Ninja” is that it creates that false narrative. That this was some plot between all of us to drag her. Our panel guests have opinions about Ninja and the other 30 people who came up on Sunday. Our crowd has an opinion on everyone as well. Ninja has been a featured cast-member on the last two seasons, who won S33 if you ask me and had the biggest elimination moment on S34 so far. She’s also become fairly polarizing. We host a podcast and do live shows providing a forum for people to share those opinions and weigh in on these moments and the cast. I am sorry that this clip offended people and also gave the wrong idea of what our live shows are or what our intention is with the discussions we have. There is never malicious intent and if it ever strays into that territory, I do my best to intervene or call a person out for it. In fact, some might say that is precisely what I did during episode 71 of our podcast and what ended our relationship with that episode’s guest [Ashley]. I also reached out to the person [Ninja] who is referenced in the clip from Sunday because I wanted to make sure she didn’t take it the wrong way. Without going into detail, because it was a private back and forth, her response was exactly what I would have expected from someone with her character, positive attitude and refusal to allow online negativity impact her life. She supports what we do as much as we support what she does. I hope this clears up some of this for you. I have certainly learned from this whole ordeal and will be making some adjustments on my end. Every show is a learning experience. This one was no different. Thanks for reaching out.”

I have nothing to add but: “Well said, Scott.” It seems even Ninja agrees. What do the Saniacs think about all this? Are you #teamscott or #teamashley? 

 

Follow Saniac on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to keep up with all the TEA. 

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