Boston Rob Reflects on His Most Iconic ‘Survivor’ Move & Reveals His Mount Rushmore

Rob “Boston Rob” Mariano has played Survivor four times and is widely considered to be one of the best players of the game. While he didn’t win until his fourth time playing, he finished as runner-up in his second attempt, and also met his wife, Amber Mariano (née Brkich), on that season.

Needless to say, Rob has made his mark on the game and admits he’s made “a lot” of great moves during his five seasons on the show. However, there’s one that stands out above the rest.

When it comes to his most iconic move ever, Rob knows the “easy answer” is when he convinced Lex van den Berghe to keep Amber in the game on Survivor: All-Stars (Season 8) after a tribe swap separated him from his now-wife, who was his closest ally on that season. At the very next tribal council, Mariano led the charge to vote Lex out of the game, which helped him run the show to the end. Of course, it also solidified his status as a “villain,” and Amber ultimately won the $1 million at final tribal council.

However, “from a strategic point of view,” it was actually a move during his winning season (Season 22), that Rob considers to be his best. “When Matt [Elrod] came back from Redemption Island and won his way back in the game, [I] got everybody together to immediately send him back to Redemption Island again and not have to worry about the chance [that he’d vote me out],” Rob remembers. “I think that was pretty smart and polarizing and allowed me to keep control of the group. That was a pretty smart move.”

Rob’s performance on Survivor: Redemption Island has gone down as one of the most dominant in the show’s history. We, of course, couldn’t help but point out that Rob had the makings of an all-time move on Season 20 (Heroes vs. Villains) when he masterminded a plan for his alliance on the Villains tribe to split the votes between Parvati Shallow and Russell Hantz, which would ultimately flush Russell’s hidden immunity idol and ensure that one of the two would be voted out of the game.

Unfortunately, Tyson Apostol, one of Rob’s allies, ended up screwing up the whole plan and got voted out himself. The blunder caused Rob to lose control of his tribe, and he was sent home two votes later.

“[Tyson] still doesn’t know what he did wrong,” Rob laughs. “I saw him in Arizona not too long ago and I was like, ‘Bro…’ He’s like, ‘Yeah I don’t know.'”

With Survivor currently in its milestone 50th season, the discussion of which four players in the show’s history sit on the Survivor Mount Rushmore, and Rob agrees with the majority opinion.

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“I think all the lists I’ve seen going around have it right. I think it’s me, Parvati, Sandra [Diaz-Twine], and Tony [Vlachos]. I think that makes the most sense.”

He points out that Shallow, Diaz-Twine, and Vlachos have all won the game twice (Shallow’s second win was on Survivor: Australia vs. The World), and jokes, “I won five times. Ya know? Got my wife and four kids!”

Survivor, Season 50, Wednesdays, 8/7c, CBS