Former MAD Lions teammates turn on each other after VALORANT roster change

Just a few hours after MAD Lions announced the mid-season changes to their roster competing in the NA VALORANT Challengers League, the team’s current in-game leader and one of the now-former players got into it on Twitter.

The organization released both Taylor “drone” Johnson and Anthony “ZexRow” Colandro today, effectively hitting the reset button on the roster given that teams don’t have to retain the same player core between the first and second Challengers split.

Soon after, ZexRow started simmering the beef first when he called out the team’s in-game leader Justin “Trick” Sears.

ZexRow said the current MAD Lions IGL “took over the roster and changed it completely after [qualifying for Challengers] within 2 months and thinks he deserves the spot.” Trick, who earlier in the day made a post taking accountability for the MAD Lions’ disappointing split, opted not to take “the high road,” and responded.

Trick tore into his former teammate in response, saying ZexRow “[didn’t] bring anything to the team, argued with everyone every single round, [had] the worst comms of any pro player, and [couldn’t] even win a single duel,” adding he wasn’t “meant for Challengers.” Instead of responding with a separate tweet, ZexRow jumped right into Trick’s replies to fire back.

ZexRow acknowledged his poor comms but replied to Trick, telling him he wasn’t good enough to make the decision to change an entire roster. Trick responded by telling ZexRow he was unable to take criticism, claiming the post he had written earlier in the day was to deflect blame away from ZexRow and that he was not the one taking roster moves.

The two continued to trade digital jabs, with ZexRow posting an allegedly deleted tweet from Trick where the in-game leader claims he “made Dark Ratio myself with little to no help and [led] them to [be] the best [free agent] team in VALORANT history.” Trick followed that up with a screenshot of the two’s Discord message history, which shows ZexRow saying he wouldn’t go back to the team if they trialed a replacement.

Dot Esports has reached out to a member of OverActive Media, the parent company of MAD Lions, for comment.