7 Most Controversial ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Winners, Ranked
Dancing With the Stars‘ popularity is on the upswing, which means there are a lot of passionate fans out there who have some pretty heavy opinions about the eliminations made in the ballroom each week. On November 25, Season 34 will crown its champion, and there’s bound to be some discourse amid viewers about whether the right person was selected.
The eventual winner will be the person who receives the highest combined judges’ scores and viewer votes in the finale episode. Since Season 1, this show has been about the fans as much as it is about the scores from the professional judges, which means not everybody always agrees with the majority decisions that are made.
Over the years, there have been some controversial winners, with fans arguing that the best dancer was not chosen, among other complaints. Scroll down for a ranking of the Mirrorball controversies.
Dancing With the Stars, Season 34, Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC
7. Iman Shumpert
During Week 6 of Season 30, Iman Shumpert had one of the most memorable dances in DWTS history. His Horror Night contemporary with Daniella Karagach stuck with viewers throughout the season, and he ultimately won the Mirrorball against JoJo Siwa, even though she tended to score higher than him most weeks.
Both Shumpert and Siwa earned perfect scores in the finale, so it was the fan vote that put Shumpert over the edge to win in a decision that some found to be controversial.
6. Shawn Johnson
Season 8 was truly a “this could go either way” year for Dancing With the Stars. Throughout the majority of the season, Gilles Marini was the favorite to win, but Shawn Johnson came out and absolutely crushed her freestyle dance, which seemingly put her over the edge to be crowned the Mirrorball champion.
It’s been confirmed that this was the closest vote in DWTS history. Less than 1% separated Johnson and Marini in the finale. Not to mention, Melissa Rycroft, who went on to win the show’s All-Star season, which both Johnson and Marini also competed on, came in third place. A truly insane level of competition!
Although Johnson’s win certainly didn’t break the internet with complaints, this final was definitely a nail-biter and sparked a big discussion at the time.
5. Amber Riley
A major viewer complaint about Season 17 was how hard the judges were on Corbin Bleu. Fans were often disappointed in the scores he received from the judges, including the three 9s he earned for one of his finale dances (winner Amber Riley earned a perfect score for both of her finale dances).
That’s not to say that Riley wasn’t an incredible dancer and undeserving of the win. However, the debate about whether the judges’ apparent favoritism played a role in how things turned out overshadowed the ending a bit.
4. Donny Osmond
Donny Osmond edged out Mya to win Season 9, which came as a bit of a surprise, considering she beat him on the leaderboard most weeks. They had tie scores in the finale, though, and ultimately, Osmond’s popularity among DWTS‘ audience won out.
3. Kellie Pickler
Kellie Pickler beat Zendaya to win Season 16. They both received perfect scores from the judges in the finale, so the decision came down solely to what the viewers were voting for.
However, there was a snafu on ABC.com during finale week, and because of the glitch, it was decided that none of the website votes from that week would count. Votes cast via text, phone calls, and Facebook were combined to determine the winner.
While nothing can be proven, many fans feel like Zendaya was slighted by the loss of the online votes. Her partner, Val Chmerkovskiy, said it was “bulls**t,” and 12 years later, Zendaya admitted to W Magazine that she still has “animosity” about not winning.
“I felt that loss,” she admitte.d “I was only 16 years old, and it was highly stressful. Being on live television every week? It’s so scary. I took it very seriously, which, in retrospect, I wish I didn’t. I wish I’d enjoyed it a little bit more and just was like, ‘Eh, whatever.’ You know what I mean? But I was stressing myself out. I really went through it on that.”
2. Kelly Monaco
When Kelly Monaco was crowned the winner of Season 1 in 2005, many viewers felt runner-up John O’Hurley deserved the title. It created such outrage, in fact, that ABC aired a special re-match competition two months later. That time, O’Hurely was the champion.
“It didn’t phase me at all,” Monaco told Entertainment Weekly. “I was like, ‘Of course, apples or oranges, there’s going to be one over the other.’ And yeah, there was some controversy over it, which made me doubtful, like, ‘Well, should I have won?’ I don’t think I was the best dancer, but I was the most supported. So, I was like, ‘OK, let’s go.'”
The soap star returned for Season 15’s all-star showdown and came in third place.
1. Bobby Bones
For most of Season 27, Bobby Bones scored toward the bottom of the leaderboard, but his fans were invested enough to help him take home the Mirrorball.
Seven years later, Bones’ win has remained a topic of contention amid the DWTS community, with fans insisting that runner-up Milo Manheim deserves still justice.
In fact, Bones himself even admitted that he mailed his trophy back due to the controversy, which included negative remarks from others involved in the show. He also revealed that he didn’t even want to do the show at first, but was asked to by ABC in order to promote another program he was going to be part of on the network.
“Am I supposed to not show up and work hard?” he wondered in a TikTok video. “Am I supposed to not give it freaking everything that I have? Am I supposed to throw it and not win? Like, was I supposed to show up and go, ‘Well, since I didn’t have any training as a kid, I should just not win this competition.’ What did I do? I had a great attitude. I worked hard and here we are, six years later I’m still catching strays out of nowhere.”
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