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Carole Baskin wants to eliminate them all, but her first victim was Charles Oakley. The 56-year-old former professional basketball player couldn’t win against Baskin’s killer moves and was the first competitor to be eliminated on Dancing With The Stars (DWTS) season 29. Oakley and his partner, professional dancer Emma Slater, danced to the rhythm of the Luther Vandross song Never Too Much; however, the judges though their performance deserved a score of 15 points out of 30.
The Big Cat Rescue owner scored 16 points after dancing the Viennese waltz to Tom Jones’ What’s New Pussycat and joined Oakley as the bottom two. Both acts faced each other, but the judges Carrie Ann Inaba and Derek Hough decided to save the 59-year-old big-cat rights activist.
Despite her score, Baskin showed happiness and received positive comments from the judges who said she was “shining.” However, the audience expressed they didn‘t like she had a higher score than 18-year-old actress Skai Jackson, who had problems during the routine. “The fact that she got a higher score than Skai is an injustice. She’s not even close to the caliber of Skai and the scoring tonight was ridiculous. Do better judges. Do better,” a person wrote, while others defended Baskin by saying that ”Skai had a major mistake in her routine tonight, that’s why she had points knocked off.”
The DWTS contestant drew public attention after appearing on Netflix’s documentary series Tiger King. According to the Texas native, the “negative attention” she revealed after the docuseries affected her family. “I’ve seen what the media can do to you,” Carole Baskin said to her partner Pasha Pashkov. “And I hate that I try even harder to be strong in their presence. I keep it inside and wait until everybody’s gone before I can break down. I don’t know how to make it better.”
Baskin also said her daughter is very hurt, and she doesn’t even read the news anymore. It is important to note that following the series’s release, the cat lover has been the subject of conspiracy theories that, with insufficient evidence, claim that she has something to do with the disappearance of Don Lewis, her second husband.
Despite the allegations made by Joe Exotic, the former owner of the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, which also stars on Tiger King, as of this writing, no evidence links Baskin with the mysterious disappearance.
The Dancing With The Stars competitor hopes that the audience can perceive who she really is or at least a more positive image through the show. Baskin also wishes her daughter does the same.