Valorant pros ShahZam and WARDELL spark feud over “rats” comment

Lauren Bergin
Shahzam-and-WARDELL

Former CS:GO players turned Valorant pros Sentinels ShahZam and TSM WARDELL have had a fiery exchange over Twitter. 

Even at the highest level of esports, trash talk remains common between the big name players, contributing to in-game rivalries that spice up any match.

There’s some age old rivalries between esports organizations like G2 Esports and Fnatic, never mind within the player base itself. Although sometimes these rivalries stay lighthearted, they can ignite and start a real feud.

This is exactly what appears to have happened between former CS:GO pros turned Valorant stars Shahzeb ‘ShahZam’ Khan of Sentinels and Matt ‘WARDELL’ Yu of TSM.

The TSM player gave the video a fiery reaction.

WARDELL responds to ShahZam video

The fiery exchange began when the Sentinels posted a short clip of ShahZam talking about his feelings towards TSM. With ShahZam stating that be believes Sentinels have more consistency than TSM, admitting that he does “like to seem them lose,” the video received a knee-jerk response from the TSM player.

WARDELL hit back with a slamming criticism of the video, writing “who knew rats can talk? LMAO.” ShahZam quickly followed up with a defence of his team, stating that the video was old and asking WARDELL “why are you so mad?”

This, however, just ignited the fire more. WARDELL promptly responded to ShahZam by making fun of the player’s hair, stating that ‘it’s not silver, it’s platinum’ to which ShahZam playfully accused the TSM player as ‘having a crush’ on him.

Banter gone wrong?

A lot of fans chalked the exchange up as trash talk and banter, but others were unsure considering the genuine surprise that ShahZam appeared to show in his first tweet.

Either way, the feud has sparked a more intense rivalry between the already battling teams; a rivalry that may be settled on the battlefield of the NA First Strike tournament. It would be great to see Sentinels and TSM face off once more and settle their long established rivalry, so fingers crossed we finally get that rematch.

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About The Author

Lauren was formerly Dexerto's Features Editor and resident Diablo Sorceress. With two Master's degrees under her belt and a lot more Steam achievements, she specializes in all things Blizzard and Riot Games, with some Lost Ark and FFXIV on the side.