An intense Twitter exchange broke out between Call of Duty League pros Donovan ‘Temp’ Laroda and Josiah ‘Slacked’ Berry after the latter posted a tweet that appeared to be negative towards some of his Seattle Surge teammates.
Some would say that player feuds are a staple of the competitive Call of Duty culture, and Temp, one of the more outspoken CoD pros of his generation, has been involved in several over the years, the latest one being against Slacked.
It all started on June 8, when Slacked tweeted out a photo of a scoreboard from a scrim match between Seattle Surge and Toronto Ultra, saying that their practice sessions have been “diabolical” (disgracefully bad or unpleasant).
The caption seemed to highlight the poor performances of Nicholas ‘Proto’ Maldonado and Casey ‘Pandur’ Romano, who were at the bottom of the scoreboard and playing noticeably worse than the rest of the team.
He tweeted this knowing that neither player is nearly as experienced or established as the other three veterans on the roster. In fact, they both started the 2020 season as substitutes; Pandur was promoted to replace Ian ‘Enable’ Wyatt while Proto is taking the spot of the recently-retired Damon ‘Karma’ Barlow.
He deleted the tweet quickly after posting, but not before it caught the attention of Temp, who decided to take some shots at his Seattle counterpart for what he felt was an unwarranted public humiliation of his own teammates.
Temp called Slacked a “toxic leader” and even went as far as to accuse him of being part of the reason why Karma retired because he “couldn’t stand playing” with him anymore.
Even London Royal Ravens’ Matthew ‘Skrapz’ Marshall chimed in to say that he “expected better” from the Surge captain.
Slacked, of course, defended himself by retorting with his own insults, claiming that Temp was being hypocritical since he himself has thrown teammates under the bus when it comes to tournaments, a declaration that the Subliners star called false.
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He also brought up the fact that the Donny still remains without a major tournament victory, a jibe that many others have used when feuding with him and one that he’s apparently come to terms with.
That seems to be the end of it, for now, as neither player continued the back-and-forth after Slacked intentionally misspelled Temp’s name, which many could easily read between the lines.
Unfortunately, we won’t be able to see these two square off for quite a while, as the next event where both teams will be attending is the London Home Series, on July 17-19.
Related: Temp – The CoD Prodigy chasing his first Championship
Slacked and his Seattle teammates will have more important things to worry about in the immediate future, however, as they’re one of the eight teams that will be competing in the upcoming CDL Minnesota.
Their performances have been far from good so far this season and, considering that they’re coming off the huge retirement news from Karma, not to mention the fact that this next tournament is stacked with top teams, not many are expecting the Surge to make much noise.