Ninja explodes at Valorant teammate for ‘not trying hard enough’ in ranked

Brad Norton
Ninja playing Valorant

While in the midst of a rough Valorant session, Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins exploded at one of his Radiant teammates, putting them on blast for not taking the ranked experience seriously enough.

Before his time as one of the world’s biggest content creators, Ninja was a professional gamer. He was a top competitor for a number of years in the Halo scene and he’s recently been climbing his way through the ranks in Valorant.

Having reached the upper echelons of ranked play in Riot’s tactical FPS, he’s won more than he’s lost. Though his competitive nature may have taken over a little too much during a December 26 Twitch stream.

Down 0-6 at the start of a match on Haven, Ninja took aim at a Radiant player in the lobby. Despite having the same number of kills and the same deaths, he took the opportunity to lash out at the Reyna on his team.

“Shut the f*** up,” he said at the start of the next round as teammate ‘P0L0’ typed something in the game’s chat. There’s no telling what set off this reaction as Ninja’s facecam obscured the in-game text.

This one callout did, however, spark a string of insults from both parties.

“I don’t give a f*** who you are,” the player responded. “You’re not going to tell me to shut up.” 

“How about I tell you to stop playing the game because you’re f***ing awful at it?” Ninja quickly followed up. Evidently, Ninja was frustrated by his team’s Duelist being picked off early in many of those defensive rounds.

“How are you Radiant bro? You’re literally bottom fragging on Reyna.” Ninja then called him out for not caring about ranked play but also for not being a part of a professional team. 

“Oh, you don’t care about ranked and you don’t care about competing? So what do you care about? You’re getting f***ing dominated, you’re awful.”

Following this back and forth, the two surprisingly focused up in-game. Ninja stopped flaming his teammate and they even managed to pull things back a bit.

While they couldn’t close out the upset win, they made it a close affair with an 8-13 loss. Despite these efforts, Ninja soon went back to the argument with his chat.

“You guys know how I stand when it comes to matchmaking games,” he said to his fans after the game ended. “If you’re playing a competitive game and your excuse is ‘relax, it’s just ranked,’ you’re just a piece of s**t.”

Having reached some of the highest ranks in Valorant, Ninja has proven himself in the title, but he’s always hungry for that next win. Maybe a little too hungry for some of the teammates he finds himself with, even at Radiant.

This isn’t the first time Ninja has become heated in Valorant recently either. Just last week, the Twitch star came under fire from the Riot game’s community when he accused a rival pro team of cheating in the Knights Before Christmas Invitational following an 0-2 loss.

The team, Built By Gamers, was later cleared of Ninja’s accusations.

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About The Author

Brad Norton is the Australian Managing Editor at Dexerto. He graduated from Swinburne University with a Bachelor’s degree in journalism and has been working full-time in the field for the past six years at the likes of Gamurs Group and now Dexerto. He loves all things single-player gaming (with Uncharted a personal favorite) but has a history on the competitive side having previously run Oceanic esports org Mindfreak. You can contact Brad at brad.norton@dexerto.com