Heroic Benches Parker Over Unprofessional Behavior

South American Dota team Heroic have announced that they are benching David “Parker” Nicho Flores with seemingly immediate effect. While he’s not 100% off the team, they will be playing BLAST Slam 1 with a stand in instead. With the tournament just less than a week away, they’ve got plenty of work if they’re going to repeat the success of PGL Wallachia Season 2.

Now, most of the time when an org benches a player out of the blue, we’re given some kind of wishy washy reasoning that doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. This is for obvious reasons, not everything needs to be made public, which isn’t really a sentiment Heroic seem to share.

Why was Parker benched by Heroic?

The announcement was made on their official X account in both English and Spanish and confirmed the reason for Parker being benched was because of his actions during the ESL One Bangkok South American qualifiers.

It seems there were some disagreements over the strategy that led to Parker refusing to participate in the spirit of the competition to the best of his ability. They still managed to place second, losing out 3-2 in a best of 5 grand finals to beastcoast but that did mean that Heroic missed out on the chance to play the Major.

According to the post, this wasn’t the first time they’ve encountered problems like this with Parker. While ominously referring to “previous incidents”, the org acknowledged his raw talent and contributions but overall, they feel this is the right step for both parties.

Heroic at BLAST Slam 1

The inaugural BLAST Slam 1 event is set to kick off on November 26th and now Heroic will be playing with stand in Yuma “Yuma” Langlet, who has previously played for the likes of Nouns Esports and Nigma Galaxy.

We haven’t had the groups announced yet so it’s not clear if Heroic will be up against it from day 1 or if they’ll have some time to settle in. There are multiple TI winning squads in the line up, including Team Liquid, Team Spirit and yes, OG still count, OK?? So it’s safe to say they’ll have their work cut out for them.