Things seemed to get personal after Mike ‘Hastr0’ Rufail took to Twitter to boast after the Dallas Empire went 3-0 during CDL’s Super Week and swept the Los Angeles Thieves.
The Empire went undefeated during Super Week to win their group, and earn a first-round bye in the upcoming Stage 1 Major’s Winners Bracket. They capped it all off with a 3-0 against 100 Thieves’ Los Angeles squad.
Hastr0, the head of Dallas Empire’s parent org Team Envy, started the Monday after the group stage off by firing a few tweets that eventually led to a colorful exchange with 100T’s Jack ‘CouRage’ Dunlop, Thieves coach Jordan ‘JKap’ Kaplan, and others right on the timeline.
After noting how quiet the usually talkative Thieves seemed to be after Dallas secured the 3-0, JKap replied, asking “Don’t you ever get tired of this s*** man?” to which Hastr0 responded “You know me pretty well, Kap. Why do you even need to ask that question?”
“Figured at some point you’d get tired of begging for attention, but guess not,” JKap shot back, which is where CouRage came into the picture with a shot out of nowhere.
“Kap…cmon bro. Hastro has to be the one to tweet when Envy wins a match because there are no Envy fans to do it for him,” Dunlop wrote. “Just take a look they’ve averaged a combined -4,000 subscribers across their 3 YouTube channels this year. I’d rather run a successful well-rounded business.”
From there, CouRage and the Envy owner got into their own back-and-forth, with Hastr0 accusing the streamer of caring “so much about the money and the views.”
“Cmon Mike, you were a below average call of duty professional, became a below average call of duty commentator, and are now hemorrhaging money as a team owner,” the 100T content creator fired back. “I’d keep replying but this is the most interaction you’ve gotten since you snaked Clayster.”
CouRage wasn’t done yet though, and after Rufail assured him Envy was “extremely healthy as a business” the former CoD commentator got one last blast in.
“You legit can’t take our name out of your mouth because you ‘envy’ what we have,” he said. “Our intern’s show gets more views per video then your entire 3 channels in 1 month. One apparel drops earns more than your entire business in 10 years of merch.”
If you thought that was it, think again, as CouRage also compared his and Hastr0’s respective esports winnings along with the simple caption “Dogwater.”
Dogwater. pic.twitter.com/iaLiOdVaLC
— Jack “CouRage” Dunlop (@CouRageJD) March 1, 2021
Plenty of other people, orgs, and accounts commented on the beef as well, but according to CouRage no one was upset, and it was just some good old Modern Warfare lobby-style banter, “I didn’t get upset. I just trashtalked back. Some good old MW2 lobby vibe type of stuff. Nobody is upset here.”
As proof of just how deep this trash talk goes, one needs only to take a look at JKap’s Twitlonger shots at Hastr0 from…2014.
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The drama didn’t slow down as the day went on. Plenty of others chimed in while JKap and Hastr0 continued to air out their beef for the world to see. What came next was another lengthy post from JKap recounting his years at Envy. Throughout this championship-winning run, he claimed Envy never sent contracts to the team. “We were never under contract during the 2017 season,” he explained. “None of us.”
However, three days following Champs that year and Envy suddenly reached out with a “contract offer,” according to JKap. The reason behind this perplexing move was “because [Hastr0] wanted to sell [them] for a buyout.”
Despite arguments that JKap’s 2016 contract auto-renewed due to a first right of refusal clause, Hastr0 was eventually forced to leave the players alone. Though not before asking for $1,300 in payments from the players due to missing stream hours.
“When I was too smart to fall for that absolute horsesh**, out of pure pettiness, he retroactively fined me $1300 for not streaming leading up to the biggest CoD tournament of all-time at that point in time…. A tournament I ended up winning under his org.”
Hastr0 continued to deny such claims in response to the new thread. “I treated you well and you know that,” he said. I even treated you unbelievably fair prior and gave you a job on our team when there were better opportunities.”
It’s clear there’s plenty of tension between everyone involved and Call of Duty drama hasn’t been quite this hot in a while. We’ll be sure to keep you updated as the drama continues to unfold in full view of the community.