One performance in and we already have front-runners on Dancing With the Stars. DeMarcus Ware and Tinashe each received a 23 out of 30 score from judges Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli and Len Goodman, and Fuller House's Juan Pablo Di Pace received a total score of 22. The competition for the Mirrorball will be fierce.
While the scores were good, that doesn't mean the three leaders didn't have their own challenges during the first night of competition.
"I've never touched a dance floor before, but I feel like with good teaching, especially from Lindsay…you can see that hard work really pays off," Ware said about working with his professional partner Lindsay Arnold.
Ware, who used to play football with the Dallas Cowboys, said dancing is harder than his former job. "Football is more about athleticism, but with dancing, it's about the steps…Mentally it's so harder, it's way harder than football," he told E! News.
Pro dancer Brandon Armstrong said Tinashe did great, but they both agree there's a lot that they need to work on. "It only gets harder from here, so I think we're excited to work," he said.
Tinashe said their dance, the jive, was challenging because it's not a style she's familiar or comfortable with. "Learning a completely new style of dance, the weight shifting is so much different—it's super high energy, super fast paced, so it's keeping our energy up through the entire performance, things like that, all the technique Brandon's really filled me in on because I was unaware, yeah, those are really the hardest things," Tinashe said.
Di Pace said the positive feedback from the judges feels "too good."
"I'm scared of feeling good, I don't want to feel too good because there's a lot of people here still. A long journey, hopefully, so, yeah, it feels amazing, but I don't want to feel too amazing. I'm watching it from the distance," Di Pace said.
The Fuller House star said learning the two dances has been hard, but he's also had a hard time relinquishing control with Cheryl Burke. "We're both control freaks in this relationship…She knows best, she totally knows best," Di Pace said.
And he's already had his first injury: a vertebra out of place.
See how the stars do on night two when Dancing With the Stars airs Tuesday, Sept. 25 at 8 p.m. on ABC.