Why William Levy Could Win Dancing With the Stars Season 14
This is it. The Dancing With the Stars Season 14 Mirror Ball trophy is about to find a forever home. Will it go to Katherine Jenkins & Mark Ballas, William Levy & Cheryl Burke or Donald Driver & Peta Murgatroyd?
We already shared a few reasons Packer Nation could take the win and other reasons The Welsh Wiggler could take the trophy. Here are five reasons Team Fuego will fire up the ballroom to victory.
1. Have you heard the screams?
Even from home you could go deaf from the rock star screams for Loverboy Levy. He’s the Elvis of DWTS. We’re just surprised no one has thrown undies at him during a routine. Yet. (You’re a pillar of restraint, Bruno!) You can’t win this competition on judges’ scores alone and William’s fan base is as huge as his muscled torso. He inspires passion, which is something Katherine and Donald — although very well loved and respected — don’t have on the same level. We can imagine fans staying up late voting over and over and over for William to win and that’s exactly what you need to get it done.
2. The judges love him too
Bruno Tonioli and Carrie Ann Inaba openly swoon over William and even Len Goodman has flashed his 10 paddle for William and Cheryl a couple of times. The judges don’t just love William, they recognize and appreciate Cheryl’s talent as a teacher and choreographer. Her contestants tend to improve throughout the season and William is no exception. Katherine and Mark have struggled in the past two weeks with distracting wardrobe malfunctions and little missteps, but William and Cheryl got that stuff out of the way a few weeks ago. Now they are entering their stride, just in time to pull off a killer Freestyle.
3. Cheryl gets things done
Last season Cheryl took Rob Kardashian — of all people! — to second place and turned him into a genuinely good dancer. She deserves a ton of credit for that, but that’s what she does. She's won twice before and got to the finals three other times. We thought she was going to win with Gilles Marini on Season 8, but maybe William is Gilles 2.0. Even Cheryl said William is the hottest piece of you-know-what DWTS has ever seen and that could be what pushes him further than her last insanely hot foreign partner. The best Freestyle tends to win the season and Cheryl’s Season 2 Freestyle with Drew Lachey is still the gold standard. With William’s penchant for getting 10s, they could land a perfect 30 for the Freestyle, get the audience into a tizzy, drum up more votes than ever and put Cheryl next to Derek Hough as the next three-time champ.
4. He’s the star of the season
From the premiere onward, the male celebs and pros have openly struggled to come up with ways to match William’s natural star quality and crowd appeal. This has become The Shirtless Season mostly because the celebs have all been so talented, they felt the need to give the (largely female) viewers/voters something extra — and that something has been the men’s bodies. No one does it better than William, but he’s been hesitant to show off his goods and play that card. He wants to be seen as more than that. Of course, he is more than that, which is why he got the cover of People Magazine, being featured in the same kind of Hollywood rags-to-riches success story Season 13 winner J.R. Martinez got last season.
5. He has an inspiring backstory worth supporting
William is a good dancer, the judges love him, he’s got sex appeal for days and he’s dancing with Cheryl. That alone could get him a win. But he also has the kind of inspiring backstory that makes people feel good about supporting a contestant to the end. He grew up poor in Cuba and said on DWTS he’s glad he went without so many basic amenities because it made him stronger and work harder. His family emigrated to the United States in 1995 and he’s now a huge telenovela star and “The Latin Brad Pitt.” He’s on his way to being a Hollywood film star and maybe someday he can look back on how his major US career started when he won DWTS.
Watch the next new episode of DWTS on Monday, May 21 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.
Gina Carbone is a contributing writer at Wetpaint Entertainment. Follow her on Twitter @ginacarbone.
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