CDL amateur Zaptius retaliates after being dropped from WestR

The drama within the Call of Duty League has extended to the Challengers scene as well. After yesterday’s blow-up between Envy and 100 Thieves, CDL amateur squad WestR decided to drop its founder Alex “Zaptius” Bonilla.

WestR has dominated the Call of Duty Challengers scene for most of Black Ops Cold War. The roster has won five events thus far and finished second in last week’s North America Stage 1 Playoffs.

Everyone is gonna have their opinions but im excited to get back in the lab with @Phantomz & the squad

— Paul (@PaulEhx_) March 2, 2021

However, that didn’t stop the roster from dropping Zaptius and replacing him with Timothy “Phantomz” Landis. And as soon as that happened, Zaptius supposedly locked the roster out of the official WestR Twitter account. According to now-deleted tweets, Zaptius had control of the account and changed the password after the team’s decision to drop him.

The now-deleted tweets indicated that the WestR organization would follow Zaptius. If this is true, then the former WestR squad plus Phantomz will need to find another brand or organization to represent.

🌴 !regain 🌴

— WestR 🌴 (@WestROfficial) March 2, 2021

 WestR’s new direction surprises COD community

The reason for Zaptius’ release stems from an apparent problem the roster has faced in recent weeks. According to team member Tom “GRVTY” Malin, the move was simply the best option for the team.

“This will fix our pace issue we’ve been having as of recent and also adapts us to the meta developing currently,” GRVTY said. “In the past, I’ve had a lot of success with Phantomz and the kid is a full-blown beast.”

The roster move was quite shocking for the Call of Duty League scene as a whole. WestR has made as much noise as an amateur team can make, even going toe-to-toe with professional squads in scrimmages.

Although, the team felt it was best to move on from Zaptius, some professional players chimed in to Zaptius’ free agency announcement with shock and awe.

Good heavens

— OpTic Methodz (@Methodz) March 2, 2021

At the time of publication, WestR’s only public tweet about the matter simply says “regain.” It’s unclear if Zaptius’ new team will go under the WestR brand, but it is safe to say a new rivalry was just born in the Call of Duty Challengers scene.