Brad Fiorenza reveals what wasn't shown that made The Challenge: All Stars 4 his worst season

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Challenge: All Stars 4 episode 7.

Brad Fiorenza knows that The Challenge: All Stars 4 is his worst season.

The former champ had just come in second place on All Stars 3, and he was the male winner of the first challenge this season, so his confidence was extremely high at the beginning. But then his losing streak began when he started making simple mistakes. He dropped all the water bags in one challenge. He missed an easy open chair in a musical chairs challenge. And his performance in this week's trivia challenge was ... well, pretty rough. When he was sent into a memory elimination against Adam Larson, he ultimately lost and was sent home.

"I was a little shocked, especially after the first challenge — I'll just say it was not my best work, to put it simply," Brad tells Entertainment Weekly about his season-long performance. "It was hard to watch. My mentality has always been, As long as I leave my best on the field, I still walk away with a win. It might not be the trophy, but you did your best. And I feel like the one letdown that I provided myself on this season was that I don't feel like I did my best work."

Below, Brad reveals what caused him to struggle all season long, what he's learned from this humbling experience, and more.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So what happened this season?

BRAD FIORENZA: I was with somebody for a little over three years, we had been living together, and we broke up right before the season started. We broke up literally two weeks before the game, and I thought I was in a better position because I wanted to be in a better position. That was pretty rough. I remember walking through the airport and trying to talk myself up. I was so excited to have the opportunity to come and compete and reconnect with a lot of people that I have a lot of love and respect for. And it's just difficult when you're transitioning from a relationship. There's just so much to process. It's a major life change. And then there's so much to prepare for going onto a Challenge.

Sleep was probably one of my biggest challenges leading up to departure. And then once I got to the house, with the jet lag, sleep became more difficult. On some of those long, sleepless nights, I found myself thinking back to that breakup and some other personal stuff that was going on at home. That was probably one of my major setbacks this season. There were too many nights — most nights — I was up all night. If you ever had the alarm set for work and you're watching that alarm clock and you're like, I have six hours of sleep, now I got five hours, four hours... Oh my God, what am I going to do tomorrow? I mean, that was the story of my whole season.

It was not the best routine. At home, if sleep does become challenging, I can exert my energy in the gym or fall asleep to relaxing music, that's something I'm pretty accustomed to. So laying in a room with eight other people and hearing snoring and knowing I have no idea what I'll be competing in tomorrow, sometimes the excitement gets to you too. It was just a real challenge for me. I'm not a napper. I normally can't nap during the day. But halfway through this season, I was napping during the day because I was just not sleeping at night. That threw me off quite a bit.

Now that you've had over a year to think about this season and process everything, how do you feel about how the game went for you?

It's hard to relive a year ago, because I've processed and healed in different ways, especially coming out of that breakup, and it wasn't my best work on top of that. I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses, but it was just the lack of sleep. To relive the whole experience, I mean, I know what the viewers saw because I watched that as well, but I just know what was going on at home.

And it wasn't just the breakup; there was a couple of other personal things happening as well. But I didn't want to pass up the opportunity because I love the game, I love the franchise and everybody associated with it, so it's kind of like family in a way. But it wasn't an easy transition. I'm not good with jet lag, and I get really excited, too, so it just didn't make for a good recipe for sleep.

As a champion, known as one of the OG greats, you have this reputation as a real heavy hitter. Does that add pressure going into seasons now? Especially looking at your season 39 elimination loss, which I know was filmed after this season even though it aired first — do you feel as if this reputation is starting to negatively affect you?

I guess I really never thought about it in that light. But the expectations that you have for yourself — especially coming out of All Stars 3, I didn't win but that's as close as you can come to winning, and it was a great season as far as the daily challenges went. I was feeling like we were on track after the first challenge because I was the first male finisher. But then it was in teams, and I didn't even know how to segregate duties and even set expectations for myself.

The challenge where I was paired with Laurel was hard to watch because I know I slept almost zero [hours] the night before that, and I followed Leroy up the stairs into the wrong direction. Once I did that, I started to panic a little bit. To rewatch that, I was like, "Wow, the open chair was right there the whole time and I didn't even see it because I was so far into my own head at that point that the pressure had clearly got to me." I think it was obvious.

After that challenge loss, Laurel told you that you needed to figure out why you couldn’t focus. What was your reaction to her in that moment?

She was a little harsh. But that's Laurel's gameplay. She's that hard on herself, so I will never judge her for that. I could've been like, "Yeah, you're right," and start beating myself up with her, but I remember just quietly sitting there awkwardly, like, Yeah. I am distracted. I'm not sleeping. I want this to get better. But performing like this was clearly not the answer to that. It just wasn't my best work this season.

If you could go back, what would you do differently?

I think that it was just the way this season was supposed to go, and it wasn't my time to go further than I did. I don't know how to practice sleeping. If I did, that would help a lot. It was a lot of the personal stuff that I left at home thinking it was going to stay at home, but a lot of it followed me. But man, we can't end on this note. I don't know how many more of these we have. I do know that I don't want this to be my last season, and I also know that I can't change it, so I have to accept it. I was struggling with the whole season. I was able to see that clear as day.

I wish I can get a redo. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. All I can do is learn from this and make sure that in the future, I don't make the same mistakes. I mean, even analyzing that statement I just made, I made mistakes but I was just off. Once I lost my sleep schedule, I wasn't playing as well as I'm used to. And it wasn't even necessarily the physical part. It wasn't my greatest work, but I was making simple mistakes that I was embarrassed to be making.

How are you learning from this season to make sure that doesn't happen again?

Honestly, I feel like a lot of this is circumstantial with the timing of the departure, what I was leaving at home, and where I was. It's hard to rewatch because I've moved on to different things in my life, and to rewatch that, it's almost reliving more than just the season itself. The best learning experience from this season would be that even when you're making mistakes, you have to just really try to recenter and calm yourself. And I didn't do a good job of that.

The hardest part was, I remember speaking to a couple of the producers on the way out, and I was beating myself up. I said, "Horrible season." Then one of them reminded me, "The first one was the individual physical one, and you were the first male finisher." I'm so grateful that was said to me, because I was so far in my own head during departure where at least I had that one snippet to go off of to remind myself.

What was your reaction when you learned you were going into elimination against Adam?

I was a little shocked, only because Cara had approached me for a conversation, and I told her that I wasn't interested in going in to get a star at this point in time, and that was a lot to do with the sleeping. Even if I was sleeping good, I would've preferred not to, but knowing I was really short on sleep, and struggling with sleep at that point for a couple of weeks, I was a little thrown off that she felt the way she did and made the choices she did. And Ace was working with Cara, and him and I had spoken, and I felt like that went in a different direction as well. But I'm not judging their choices. I just thought maybe I was going to be okay, and then I was a little surprised to see that it seemed like they were dead set on that decision the whole time. Cara was cheering for Adam, so I don't know why we would have that conversation if it wasn't going to be factored in at all.

What was it like competing in that elimination?

Looking back, I think I was distracted by the giant controller. It was more of a remembering the code kind of thing. To be honest with you, it just wasn't the right elimination for me.

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Could you tell that Adam was pulling ahead while you were competing?

Not really. I try to leave my best on the field every time I go in, and — oof — that was just not my best work in there. I don't know how to explain it. I haven't watched it yet, so I'm going off a year of a memory. I remember going in, feeling confident before I saw the game, then I remember seeing the game and feeling like, This is a little dicier than what I wanted. Adam's a great competitor. He's a strong player. He's a strategic, smart player. I just hope the next time that I have a little more in the tank for whatever game is ahead of me.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

New episodes of The Challenge: All Stars 4 debut Wednesdays on Paramount+.