Dancing with the Stars contestant Karamo Brown is defending The Bachelorette star Hannah Brown's Season 28 win with her professional partner Alan Bersten.
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"I think that this was one of the best competitions and Hannah worked her butt off. She did such a great job," Karamo, 39, told Us Weekly on Tuesday.
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Hannah and Alan defeated runner-up couple Kel Mitchell and partner Witney Carson, third-place finishers Ally Brooke and partner Sasha Farber, and fourth-place finishers Lauren Alaina and partner Gleb Savchenko in the Dancing with the Stars finale that aired late last month on ABC.
"I mean, everyone did such an awesome job and I mean, Hannah was perfectly designed for that dance floor and she took home the mirrorball," the Queer Eye star added.
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"We all congratulated each of the finalists and, you know, said congratulations after they won."
But Hannah's win has been slightly tainted by opinions she wasn't the best dancer in the finals.
Dancing with the Stars pro Cheryl Burke, for example, insisted in her Us blog that pop star Ally was the best dancer left on the show and Hannah never truly succeeded in becoming completely vulnerable with the audience.
Dancing with the Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba also admitted to the magazine "a lot of people" in the ballroom were "shocked" when Hannah was crowned champion.
"It's not what I expected," Carrie Ann, 51, said after the Season 28 finale. "But this whole season has been filled with ups and downs and unexpected twists and turns."
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Carrie Ann elaborated late last month, "I just knew that all four [finalists] -- and even all five, actually, even [James Van Der Beek] -- could have been up here and it would've been great to see anybody win. It was just, for some reason, I don't know why that was shocking."
James' elimination in the semi-finals was shocking because he had been a frontrunner all season long and judges Carrie Ann, Bruno Tonioli and Len Goodman chose to save Ally and Sasha for the third time, sending James and partner Emma Slater home their first time in the bottom two.
In addition, James was ousted from the competition after revealing his wife had suffered a devastating miscarriage and she had asked him to dance again for her while she was in the hospital.
"Yeah, I was heartbroken for that. But what I was proud of was James' strength and his wife's strength to be able to share their pain with the world because I know so many people who have experienced loss and the loss of a child," Karamo, who is also a father, told Us.
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"And a lot of times we feel like we need to hide that. And so the fact that he was open to share that was pretty amazing."
Karamo was partnered with Jenna Johnson for the Dancing with the Stars season, but he was eliminated during a late-October episode.
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"The competition is over now and so, you know, if I could rearrange things, I would have been in the finals, but that's not how life works," Karamo joked.
"So, I'm just happy I had the experience and I went out like a champ."