Why The Challenge: World Championship Winner Is Taking a Break From the Game

Don't call it a comeback when it's a takeover. 

Following a three-year hiatus from The Challenge, Jordan Wiseley returned with a vengeance. First, the three-time champ made it to the final of this winter's The Challenge: Ride or Dies, despite entering the game as an alternate. And now, Jordan has added the title of first-ever global champ to his impressive resume, winning the debut season of the Paramount+ spinoff The Challenge: World Championship with partner Kaz Crossley.

So, what's next for Jordan? He's taking another break from The Challenge to focus on his burgeoning career as a race car driver for Hyundai after making his professional debut at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on May 13.

"It went really well," Jordan told E! News in an exclusive interview. "We're getting a lot of attention and I love it."

Jordan's career unexpectedly changed lanes when he attended an event as an ambassador for Hyundai, only to set a faster lap time than their professional driver when he got behind the wheel for fun. Three months later, he was competing in his first official race and is set to drive for Hyundai for the rest of the season.

"It's been a whirlwind, but I definitely thing I'm going to explore that for a bit," Jordan said. "I'll let someone else have some fun on The Challenge."

Not that Jordan is ready to hang up his jersey for good just yet as The Real World: Portland alum still is hungry to compete, explaining he's ready to assemble the franchise's version of "The Avengers," joking, "I'm looking for my infinity stones."

His ideal iteration of the game, he said, is an "unbridled" individual competition to truly see who is the greatest of all-time. 

"What if we had a final with all of the greats: me and CT [Tamburello] and Johnny Bananas and Wes [Bergmann]?" Jordan posed. "And then throw the leader of the rookies at the time, like Horacio Gutiérrez or someone like that, and just see. Let's do a real one!"

As any longtime Challenge fan knows, Jordan takes the game quite seriously, which can often lead to tension between him and the rest of the competitors—especially whomever he is paired with. During The Challenge: World Championship, Jordan and Kaz, a Love Island alum who won the inaugural season of The Challenge UK, often clashed over his style of play and how he treated her as a teammate. 

Acknowledging his "number one" weakness in the game, Jordan said he had to find a "happy medium" to motivate Kaz to victory. 

"I can win with anybody," Jordan said, "so it's just figuring out the way that they need to be pushed and figuring it out the right way to extract that last five or 10 percent that people don't really know that they have or are used to tapping into." Pointing to Kaz's Muay Thai training, Jordan continued, "I knew Kaz had it in her." 

Aside from Jordan's, um, sometimes harsh-but-often-effective motivational tactics, there was another factor affecting Kaz: his relationship with his former fiancé Tori Deal, who also made it to the final with her partner Danny McCray. 

Both Kaz and Danny were critical of the decisions Jordan and Tori—who met on 2017's Dirty XXX and got engaged during filming for War of the Worlds 2—were making to protect one another, but Jordan defended their strategy. 

"People can say what they want about anything, but she benefits my game," Jordan said of his alliance with Tori. "It's not like we're doing it out of just sheer blind emotion. We benefit each other's game."

Jordan and Tori's close friendship during World Championship is in stark contrast to the tension viewers witnessed between the exes during Ride or Dies, which was the first time they appeared on a season together since their contentious split in November 2020. 

Their breakup led to Jordan's hiatus from The Challenge as he was "not ready to" confront their issues. "We needed the that time apart," Jordan said. By the time he got the call for Ride or Dies, he felt ready to "rip the Band-Aid off," no matter how painful it might be. 

"That was a big season for me mentally," Jordan shared, "and that really set us up to come into World Championship with a really strong bond and back to having a friendship."

(For inquiring minds: No, Jordan and Tori are not back together, though they "still talk" all the time. "It's always good," Jordan confirmed. "I always want the best for her.")

While his past with Tori didn't prove to be a major roadblock on his 16-mile journey to victory this season, the actual terrain in South Africa resulted in one of the "top three" toughest finals Jordan has ever competed in. (That "horrible" drink they had to imbibe as part of the traditional eating portion didn't help matters.)

"It was unrelenting," Jordan explained. "It was never smooth, it was always up, always down, slippery."

In fact, it was so "difficult" to navigate that Jordan experienced something he'd never had to deal with on the show.

"It was honestly the first final where I can remember I almost started to feel a cramp," he admitted. "I was like, 'You better knock it off!' I had never been to that point before."

Gasp, is Jordan actually mortal after all? 

"There's something about aging and fine wine," Jordan assured. "Or cheese. I'm like that."

The Challenge: World Championship is streaming on Paramount+.