Smash pro Nairo claims he’s a victim amid sexual misconduct allegations

Michael Gwilliam
Smash Ultimate pro Nairo

Smash Ultimate pro Nairoby ‘Nairo’ Quezada has finally broken his silence after being accused of sexual misconduct with a minor earlier in 2020, and is claiming he is in fact the victim.

Nairo, who was accused of being in a relationship with Zack ‘CaptainZack’ Lauth when he was 20 and Zack was 15, refuted the claims in a post on October 28.

According to the Smash pro, it took a long time for this rebuttal to come to light as he is planning on taking legal action and even hired an attorney.

“I have a 30-page document detailing the full timeline with evidence, but due to legalities and because I’m saving it for court, I can’t post it publicly nor address everything here,” Nairo claimed in his statement.

Quezada claimed that he was never interested in Zack and isn’t even interested in men. Nairo said that at CEO Dreamland 2017, Zack and his friend told him they booked their hotel incorrectly and needed a place to stay.

“We slept in our own separate beds, but I woke up to Zack molesting me. I freaked out, terrified, but my body froze up and he forcefully performed oral sex on me,” Nairo alleged. “I yelled at him to stop, but he refused, and he only stopped once I managed to push him off me. I was so shaken up by everything — what he just did, his betrayal of my trust in letting him stay — that I just shut down.”

After Zack allegedly touched Nairo again the next day, he supposedly kept pressuring him and threatened to expose the situation. “He blackmailed me into a second encounter of oral sex, which he gave up midway out of annoyance at how unwilling I was. He had me under his thumb after and I had no choice but to not get on his bad side because of his threats.”

captainzack smash pro
Smash pro CaptainZack claimed he was in a relationship with Nairo.

“At Momocon 2017, Zack tried to blackmail me again and I finally snapped as I had enough of being used. Zack felt guilty at my outburst and apologized, saying he would never tell anyone and to privately resolve this. When I found out in May 2019 that rumors were brewing, Zack reassured me that he never told anyone, that he was the one who messed up, and offered to ‘take the bullet’ should it come to that,” Nairo further claimed.

According to Quezada, he had an outburst at Momocon 2017 when Zack tried to blackmail him again, and eventually, he apologized and promised not to tell anyone about the ordeal.

“When I found out in May 2019 that rumors were brewing, Zack reassured me that he never told anyone, that he was the one who messed up, and offered to ‘take the bullet’ should it come to that,” he added.

Nairo with Smash Ultimate's Sakurai
Nairo was a well-respected player before the allegations.

Furthermore, Nairo claimed that in 2019, after Zack’s sponsor dropped him, he started requesting money. Seeing as how fellow pro Elliot Bastien ‘Ally’ Carroza-Oyarce was blackmailed, he said he felt he had no choice but to comply.

“There were only three payments, all at Zack’s request: $2000 on August 13th, 2019, $275 on January 13th, 2020, and $350 on February 24th, 2020. I never told him to ‘do his part by staying quiet’. Zack has confessed that the ‘hush money’ story was false in a follow-up Twitlonger by Tamim,” he claimed.

After the allegations were made in the summer, Nairo originally tweeted that he was “wrong” and “messed up tremendously.” He also apologized to Zack for making him feel like he was carrying a burden. Shortly after the allegations surfaced, his team, NRG, severed all ties with him.

About The Author

Michael Gwilliam is a senior writer at Dexerto based in Ontario, Canada. He specializes in Overwatch, Smash, influencers, and Twitch culture. Gwilliam has written for sites across Canada including the Toronto Sun. You can contact him at michael.gwilliam@dexerto.com or on Twitter @TheGwilliam