The Los Angeles Valiant have finally announced their roster for the new Overwatch League season ahead of Pro-Am tournament.
The Valiant have picked tank Domenic ‘Krawi’ Akrawi, damage dealers Alex ‘Seeker’ Taylor and Brandon ‘NOS’ Zepeda, and supports Nolan ‘Paintbrush’ Edwards, Christopher ‘Cjay’ Smith and William ‘Lyar’ Ohlstein for the 2023 season, as confirmed by Liquipedia two days earlier.
The announcement of the roster came just hours before the team’s first match in the Overwatch League Pro-Am tournament. In a light-hearted Twitter post, the Valiant played along with the joke that the organization had lost access to the account.
“2FA [Two-factor authentication] can be hard to crack,” the Valiant wrote in the announcement post.
2FA can be hard to crack. #WingsOut Welcome @lyar_ow @paintbrush @cjayow @NosZ__ @seeker_ow @KrawiOw ! pic.twitter.com/645aUeBpM0
— Los Angeles Valiant (@LAValiant) March 23, 2023
The Los Angeles Valiant ended 2022 with a 7-17 regular season record in the East Region. Before the end of the year, the organization parted ways with the entire roster in an announcement made only on Chinese social media platform Weibo.
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For 2023, the Valiant are returning to the West Region – a move that comes just two years after the franchise moved to China and was placed in the hands of LinGan e-Sports (LGE). Despite a disastrous first year in which the Valiant went winless over the course of the 2021 season, owners Immortals Gaming Club renewed the partnership for 2022.
In September 2022, Overwatch reporter Arran ‘Halo’ Spake tweeted that LGE had missed “multiple salary payments” to players and staff. When parting ways with the Valiant, coach Wang ‘NoHil’ Fuxing said that he was put into debt while taking charge of the team.
The Valiant are slated to take on Saints on March 23 in their first match in the Overwatch League 2023 Pro-Am tournament, a $100,000 pre-season event featuring franchise teams and Contenders squads from the West.
Los Angeles Valiant’s OWL 2023 roster:
- Alex ‘Seeker’ Taylor
- Brandon ‘NOS’ Zepeda
- Domenic ‘Krawi’ Akrawi
- Nolan ‘Paintbrush’ Edwards
- Christopher ‘Cjay’ Smith
- William ‘Lyar’ Ohlstein
Keep up to date with all the transfer activity in the Overwatch scene with our off-season roster tracker.