cxzi allegedly inebriated during MIBR match

Serious accusations have been levied against Danny "cxzi" Strzelczyk for allegedly being inebriated while participating in last night's ESL Challenger League match against MIBR. cxzi has vehemently denied these allegations, however, he has acknowledged that he had approximately five drinks between 2:00 PM and 4:30 PM local time, before the match against MIBR at 7:00 PM. cxzi maintains that he was not inebriated at the time of the match. Strife have removed cxzi from the team with immediate effect and are examining their options in terminating all contractual obligations with the player.

Strife IGL Bobby "stamina" Eitrem told Dust2.us that he first was suspicious of cxzi's sobriety ahead of the match upon the player joining the TeamSpeak, however it was not until the second round that the rest of the team shared their suspicions with one another. David "J0LZ" Jolin messaged stamina, stating that cxzi must have "just got back from a dentist appointment and couldn't use his face, or he was drunk". The rest of the team shared their frustrations throughout the match with one another, with the team all concluding during one round where cxzi was inexplicably separated from the team after a bomb plant that "he must be drunk."

To support the allegations against cxzi, Strife provided Dust2.us with two audio files which were the private TeamSpeak recordings from the MIBR match and the North American RMR Qualifier #1 to show the audible difference in cxzi's speech. Upon review of the files, Dust2.us was able to reasonably agree that cxzi's speech was slurred at several points throughout the Overpass map, while it was not during the NA RMR Qualifier #1.

The team was also alerted to the possibility that cxzi had been drinking after the map was over as the player posted a now-deleted Snapchat story depicting several individuals using beer bongs or "shotgunning" beers. The video was provided to Dust2.us by cxzi to show that while it did depict friends consuming alcohol, it did not include him. It is important to note that no member of Dust2.us that reviewed the audio files are linguists or have any professional training in speech therapy. Additionally, slurred speech alone does not indicate that an individual is inebriated.

In a comment to Dust2.us, cxzi stated "At the end of the day I’m the only one that will actually know how I felt people can make assumptions about how I was speaking or so on and get the “evidence” against me but that doesn’t prove anything."

Strife made the decision to cut Danny "cxzi" Strzelczyk in the middle of their ESL Challenger League Season 40 series against MIBR with immediate effect. The team finished the series with Austin "AAustiN" Urb as an emergency stand-in for map two, falling 2-0 to the Brazilian team. Following map one, the match was paused for an extended period before it was announced live on air that cxzi was removed from the lineup for the remainder of the series against MIBR and for the remainder of the season.

In his place, Bobby "stamina" Eitrem told Dust2.us that Strife are set to add Matthew "D4rtyMontana" Paplawskas as the team's new fifth. The 17-year-old has previously stood in for Strife, playing Mythic Winter Cup 2 at the start of the year when Bobby "stamina" Eitrem was unavailable.

Prior to this incident, Strife was on the rise as a unit, recently winning Fragadelphia 16 and taking down heavyweights Evil Geniuses in the first North American RMR Open Qualifier. The loss of cxzi's firepower will almost certainly deal a blow to the squad's prospects of continuing this upward trend.

Shortly after cxzi's removal from the team was announced, stamina clarified to Dust2.us that the squad would be utilizing Matthew "D4rtyMontana" Paplawskas to fill the gap. With this new addition, Strife will be looking to recover from a largely lackluster ECL season, which sees the squad sit at a 2-3 regular-season record following the conclusion of the aforementioned match against MIBR.

Strife will have very little time to integrate their new fifth, as the team is slated to finish off the last two matches of their ECL season fairly soon, with their matches against Gaimin Gladiators and oNe set to be on March 22nd and 23rd respectively.

Editor's Note: We have updated the first paragraph to provide a better timeline of when cxzi declared he had consumed alcohol.