James Holzhauer Trolled His Own Teammate On ‘The Chase’ Ahead Of Its New Season

James Holzhauer truly made a name for himself on Jeopardy! but he also has some history with the other game show he’s currently mastering, The Chase. And now that history is coming back to the present, he’s more than willing do a little trolling to help promote his current venture.

Holzhauer, who dominated Jeopardy! in 2019 and took part in the show’s Greatest Of All-Time Tournament, parlayed that success into starring in a revival of The Chase on ABC along with fellow GOATs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. But a new season of The Chase is coming soon with a twist: the show is adding the original chaser from its UK version. That man, Mark Labbett, is known as The Beast. And he and Holzhauer have a bit of history, which is why they’re playfully sparring on Twitter ahead of the show’s new season.

The story here is interesting, as The Chase was the first game show where Holzhauer won big money. The deal with the game show is that a team of contestants answer questions to acquire cash, then face off head-to-head with a “chaser” in order to bank that money safely to win it all. If the “chaser” gets more questions right and tracks you down, though, you’re out of the game.

Holzhauer faced off with The Beast during its run on Game Show Network from 2013 to 2015, and he did really well. Which is why he’s taken to gently trolling Labbett on Twitter, even mocking the show’s marketing materials in the process with a quote tweet where he contradicts the fact that “nobody beats The Beast.” Because, well, he did and set a then-record for most questions answered correctly by a contestant.

The back-and-forth here started when Labbett called himself a “titan” amid mortals in reply to a video previewing the new season, with an added smiley face at the end to perhaps deaden the snark a bit.

That was enough for Holzhauer to fire back. And he was more than willing to use some other marketing materials from the show’s first season to make his case for him.

This all admittedly seems in good fun, as the chasers were supportive of each other but also cracked wise about successes and failures while looking on during the first season. These four guys were all competitors at some point, it’s important to note, and old habits die hard. But if there’s any actual drama to be had, it will be from the competitors on Season 2. Because whether Holzhauer wants to admit it or not, the competition chasing them down just got much harder.