Jersey City police officer Tony Vlachos started "Survivor: Cagayan" on the Brawn tribe and walked away with a million dollars and the title of Sole Survivor.
"Brawn vs. Brains vs. Beauty" was the theme for the reality show's 28th season, pitting the three tribes against each other to test whether certain characteristics influenced a player's success on "Survivor."
"I'd like to think that I have some brains, some brawn," Tony told TODAY after the live reunion show Wednesday night. "I have no beauty."
Yet he played an arguably beautiful game — unearthing immunity idols, shepherding a solid alliance, blindsiding his faithful followers but ultimately earning their respect and winning votes.
"Oh, (that's) my beauty," he agreed with a laugh. "The brains, the brawn and the beauty part of it was how I played the game. Beautiful."
"It was really ironic that Tony is a 'brawn' but he's the strategic force of the season," said Spencer Bledsoe, the cerebral underdog who clawed his way to a fourth-place finish through sheer grit and determination.
"Tony is built perfectly for this game," Spencer — himself a die-hard fan and student of "Survivor" — told TODAY, "because in this game you want to be kind of a wolf in sheep's clothing; you want to be cutthroat but not have people fear you. And the second I met Tony I thought, 'This guy's an idiot. He's a loudmouth from New Jersey; he's not going to be a strategist.' But underneath the bravado, that guy's sharp. He's really good."
Spencer admires Tony so much that he beseeched his fellow jury members to cast their votes for him instead of laid-back martial-arts instructor Woo Hwang, who, after winning the final immunity challenge, elected to sit beside his longtime ally instead of universally reviled attorney Kass McQuillen at the final tribal council.
When TODAY asked Woo for his reaction to Spencer's speech, he said with a smile, "I hated it! Spencer, come on, man. Sit down, your time is up. But he made a clear, valid statement ... it didn't help my cause whatsoever."
(What really didn't help his cause? Picking Tony over Kass, a decision that almost certainly cost him a million bucks.)
"I believe that Spencer did influence the jury," agreed Tony. "He's a brilliant guy and he talks so smoothly, and all the words just rolled off his tongue beautifully."
But Kass, who was originally allied with Spencer before flipping to Team Tony, told TODAY she "almost didn't vote for Tony" because of Spencer's "ridiculous speech."
"It was such blatant pandering ... to have someone just turn to you in a condescending manner and be like, 'You guys are all stupid and I'm the gamebot and Tony deserves to win.' I was very put off by it."
Still, she did give Tony her vote. Tasha Fox, Kass' fellow Brains tribe member, was the only juror who voted for Woo.
"The key to Tony's success," Kass explained to TODAY, "is having good allies and people below him that would clean up and help. None of us Brains had that. We never had a chance to have a minion. ... Idols and allies, that's what you need in 'Survivor.'"
Kass had neither, but she told TODAY she believes she could've swayed the jury if Woo had selected her for the final two.
"My social game sucks, yes," she admitted. "I've got to work on that. But that's who I am, and I would have owned it at final tribal."
"I believe I made a lot of decisions and a lot of moves in the game. I think it's unfair to call me a goat," she said, referring to a player dragged to the final because the jury presumably wouldn't vote for them.
"I don't even think Kass played a game," Tony argued. "Kass sucks. She's horrible. Everything she did was emotional. There was no strategy behind it."
"Kass took pleasure in watching people lose the game," he added. "I didn't. It hurt me. I took no pleasure in voting off people, especially the ones I bonded with. But I did what I had to do."
That included his liberal practice of "swearing on" his loved ones to convince others of his honesty — and lying the whole time.
"I don't have any regrets," he told TODAY. "Swearing on everybody I love ... my heart was in the right place at the time but my brain wasn't," he said. "I did everything I had to do to get to the end, and I was only playing to win. Mission accomplished."