Call of Duty League desk host and veteran esports personality Chris Puckett has fired back at criticism levied against him in recent days after he called out homophobia in the community and faced backlash for it.
On Sunday, January 15, the first week of CDL Major 2 qualifiers was nearing its end as Boston Breach faced off against the newly-formed OpTic Texas roster, with OpTic taking the bout 3-2 after much discussion around their roster moves, bringing Cuyler ‘Huke’ Garland in to replace Brandon ‘Dashy’ Otell, beforehand.
There were many memes flowing about head coach Ray ‘Rambo’ Lussier reportedly leaving scrims early to go bowling, an accusation made by Dashy in his tell-all Twitch stream, including from the broadcast itself, though mostly all in jest and lighthearted.
However, once OpTic had notched their win against Boston, Puckett gave a short speech on how important it is that fans of the esport show respect to Rambo, given his accomplishments as both a player and a coach, as well as having worked developer-side on World War II.
Put some respect on @ramboray's name 🫡 pic.twitter.com/boBaxsk55C
— Call of Duty League (@CODLeague) January 15, 2023
Shortly after said speech, Puckett put out a couple of tweets that suggested he had seen some homophobic comments made by members of the community after the fact.
He said: “There’s no place for homophobia in this community or my timeline … don’t turn into a trash human because things didn’t happen the way you thought they would.”
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To clarify for my followers seeing this from other titles, I was not talking about myself. Community was slandering someone and I came to the defense. Some of the retorts were crossing lines
— Chris Puckett (@MLGPuckett) January 16, 2023
What followed, though, Puckett likely didn’t expect, as fans across both Twitter and Reddit hit out at him, accusing him of lying about receiving homophobic comments, or using it to cover up a segment that some fans didn’t like or thought was out of place.
After receiving more abuse across social media, Pucket took to one of the Reddit threads about him to explain his thoughts and demand better from the community.
“What pissed me off was the amount of ignorant tweets, chat replies, and twitch DM’s telling me to ‘get Ray’s c*ck out of my mouth,’ and to ‘get off his d*ck,’” he explained. “You can argue with my points all you want, but come up with something better than ‘how’d his seed taste.’ We’re smarter than that, and you are better than the behavior you show behind a keyboard.”
Puckett didn’t address the situation again on either Twitter or Reddit, likely looking to put the situation behind him, but it certainly left him disappointed to see some of the comments that were made.
After three weeks of Major 2 qualifiers, the 12 best teams in Call of Duty will be headed to Boston to fight it out on LAN for their share of the $500k prize pool.