Apolo Anton Ohno admitted on Monday night’s episode of ‘Dancing With the Stars’ that he and pro partner Karina Smirnoff had had a fight just prior to last week’s performance. (The duo’s samba still managed to earn an impressive 27 points.)
The Clicker was in the post show press line to help grill the duo on what went down -- and learn how they rebounded with Monday night’s perfect score of 30 for their Viennese Waltz.
“I found it difficult to reach him,” Smirnoff said of working with the Olympic-winning athlete. “I didn’t know which door to knock on to get the reaction out of him that I wanted. We were like an old married couple. Finally, we had a fight and laid it out on the table.”
What was the battle about?
“Chocolate,” Ohno responded, deftly trying to diffuse the situation.
Smirnoff didn’t shed more light on specifics, but she hinted that their conflict was born out of the fact that men and women are just plain different.
“I told him men love with their eyes and women love with their ears,” she said. “And that he should just keep telling me sweet things.”
“(Fighting) sucked,” Ohno said. “But we came back together. This week, we were significantly different -- it couldn’t have been forced. We had to mutually want to come forward and work on a dance that was meaningful and had a dual purpose. It was great.”
While differences led to some conflict, Smirnoff feels that she and her partner are also very much alike.
“Apolo is my first athlete,” she noted (not counting her season 5 pairing with pro boxer Floyd Mayweather, Jr.). “Apolo has discipline, and he’s as stubborn as I am. That works perfectly in the ballroom. He usually lets me in, but when he doesn’t we start fighting.”
The couple’s perfect score from last night and the positive comments from the judges clearly show that the duo is capable of moving past any difficulties.
Injecting some humor into her post-show interview, Smirnoff joked that she has a plan for future dances with Ohno.
“I’m definitely incorporating more butt-slapping,” she quipped, referring to the taps on the rear end that Kirstie Alley gave Maksim Chmerkovskiy in the cast’s group dance, which earned the duo the coveted additional two points from the judges.
“It that gets extra points,” Smirnoff mused, “I’m going to spank Apolo till we get some.”
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