Dancing with the Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba has sized up the nineteenth-season finalists and revealed her thoughts on who will dance away with the competition's mirror-ball trophy on Tuesday night.
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Heading into this week's two-part finale on ABC, which will air Monday night at 8PM ET/PT and then Tuesday night at 9PM ET/PT, Inaba said it could be anyone's game.
"This to me is by far the closest competition we have had in a long time," Inaba told TV Guide.
The remaining pairs are Bethany Mota and pro partner Derek Hough, Janel Parrish and partner Val Chmerkovskiy, Alfonso Ribeiro and partner Witney Carson, and Sadie Robertson and partner Mark Ballas. One couple will be eliminated during Monday night's show going into the final episode.
"I'm really interested to see how it's all going to play out... At this stage, it could be any of them. It's going to be great," Inaba said.
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However, Inaba views Ribeiro as a frontrunner. The former The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star has brought his "A-game" every week despite suffering from what appears to be a serious back injury -- which had developed from a prior groin injury.
"Any dancer knows pain. Watching him, I have a mixture of emotions," Inaba explained.
"A, I feel really badly for him because he's so close and he's done so well, and he really has a good shot. He's been the quiet frontrunner, I'd say throughout this season, and he's set the bar for this season. So it's sad to see, so close to the finish, that he has to struggle so much."
"On another note," Inaba continued, "I'm actually genuinely worried about him, because back injuries can be dangerous. You can pull something and it can affect you for the rest of his life... So, I really hope that he will make good choices and take care of himself as he heads to the finals. Because, is the Mirrorball trophy worth sustained back pain?"
While Inaba knew who Ribeiro was at the start of the competition, she wasn't really familiar with the rest of the Season 19 cast at first.
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"At first on paper, I'm not going to lie, I wasn't too thrilled [with the cast] because I didn't know a lot of the names. Obviously we all know Tommy Chong, we all know Alfonso. But other than that, there weren't that many names that I actually knew. So I was curious," Inaba told TV Guide.
"But I was happily surprised... We've brought in a younger demo and I think it has changed up the voting a little. In the past, we had Sabrina Bryan and we had Cody Linley, and they had huge social media followers too, but [the fans] weren't watching the show. They didn't vote. This year, these kids have followings that are voting."
About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski