‘Dancing with the Stars’: Ranking the winners (#14-#5)
Happy Thanksgiving! This year we’re thankful for many different things, but as a reality TV fan, we’re absolutely a fan of the fact that we somehow have 23 seasons of a show about pseudo-famous people learning ballroom dance. It’s completely ridiculous, just as it is that we care enough about “Dancing with the Stars” to actually spend a substantial amount of time ranking the winners of this show.
Yesterday, we went through the bottom tier of winners from #23 all the way to #15, and today’ we’re going down to #5! Let’s make it clear that we are ranking based on who had the most dominant win, who had the most fans, and also who we think could come back and win again if given an opportunity.
14. Apolo Anton Ohno (season 4) – Apolo really started off the trend of Olympians coming on the show and doing extremely well, just as he also was the beginning of Julianne Hough’s rise to fame. While he doesn’t have any extremely-memorable routines, he was great almost the whole season.
13. Brooke Burke (season 7) – She wasn’t Brooke Burke-Charvet until she co-hosted the show later, and we do think because of that, her time as a worthy winner of the show is somewhat overlooked. While we wouldn’t say that her time on the show was particularly flashy, she did give a number of fantastic dances.
12. Bindi Irwin (season 21) – We’d consider this to be a really great emotional winner (we loved Bindi, and her father was one of our favorite people to watch on TV) just as much as it was a technical winner, but sometimes, we do feel like that’s okay.
11. Emmitt Smith (season 3) – There were some people who thought Mario Lopez should’ve won this season, but we think what Emmitt did so effectively was provide both great technique with passion and a lot of heart. He was a guy who, despite being a legendary football star, people could still get behind.
10. Rumer Willis (season 20) – Rumer was someone we weren’t sure what to expect from her going into her season, but then she completely delivered at almost every moment during her season. We wouldn’t be surprised if she was able to use dance at some point during the rest of her career.
9. Kristi Yamahuchi (season 6) – She’s one of many Olympians on the show, but probably the one that is the least memorable when you look back at the pantheon of really great Olympians who has been on the show over the years.
8. Alfonso Ribeiro (season 19) – Probably one of the more dominant winners in recent memory, mostly because to us it was pretty darn clear from the moment that he did the Carlton with Witney Carson that he was going to end up winning this when the dust settled.
7. Laurie Hernandez (season 23) – It’s probably a little early still to know precisely where Laurie’s going to fit in long-term among the show’s winners, but right now, we’d definitely consider her in the top tier. She had great routines, some incredibly memorable ones, and we do think she could come back and win an All-Star season easily.
6. Nicole Scherzinger (season 10) – Would she have the fan support in America to win another season? We’re not entirely sure, since she’s more popular in the UK these days. Still, there’s no denying that the former Pussycat Doll is one of the best dancers to ever be on the show.
Tomorrow, we’ll be back to rank the final five over at the link here. Be sure to check that out! (Photo: ABC.)