AJ Antonios played a strong strategic game on Australian Survivor 2025: Brain v Brawn II, making it all the way to the final three. However, when Kaelan Lockhart won the final Immunity Challenge, he chose to take Myles Kuah to the finale, as AJ was seen as too much of a threat to win.
The professional poker player said he had been planning his speech even before his elimination. Now, AJ has revealed how his final pitch would have gone if he had made it to the end.
“I would have loved to get to the end and give that speech,” he told Chattr.
What would have AJ said at the final Australia Survivor Tribal Council?
AJ reflected on his potential strategy for a final Tribal Council pitch if he were to go up against Kaelan and make his case to the Jury.
“I think it would have been really dependent on what Kaelan said, and I was pretty sure that Kaelan was going to go first,” AJ said.
“Kaelan’s not the type of person that brings other people down, so I thought he was going to talk about his own game.
“And because he was just going to talk about his own game, I didn’t want to slander Kaelan. I don’t want to bring him down. I just wanted to talk about my game.”
AJ said he would have adopted a strategy that highlighted Kaelan’s strengths while also showing the Jury that he played a role in moves Kaelan might claim as his own.
“Our games were so linked, because we played together almost the entire game,” he explained. “I thought that I could make a lot of good counterpoints to what he brought up, because a lot of his thinking and a lot of his moves were mine, and I think the audience saw them as mine.”
AJ acknowledged that Kaelan had his own distinct gameplay. “Kaelan definitely did his own things, and Kaelan was this amazing information gatherer, so I wanted to be very open to whatever he said and make counterpoints.”
He added that rather than preparing a fixed speech, he wanted to be adaptable if he made it to the final Tribal Council.
“My final jury speech, kind of like everything in Survivor, would have depended on what was happening and what was on the board,” AJ said.
“I think that I could have given a pretty good speech. I think I would have a lot of fun in that final speech, and I wanted to give a speech where I would make everybody laugh, and I’d be really positive, and I’d make fun of myself, and I just wanted it to be really lighthearted.”
What a speech it would have been!
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