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Team Vitality VALORANT Head Coach Tanizhq benched due to alleged toxic tweets

Yesterday, Team Vitality has announced the benching of its VALORANT Head Coach Tanishq ‘Tanizhq’ Sabharwal, following the alleged toxic... Henrieta | 11. June 2022

Yesterday, Team Vitality has announced the benching of its VALORANT Head Coach Tanishq ‘Tanizhq’ Sabharwal, following the alleged toxic Twitter exchange between him and another VALORANT coach, Karmine Corp’s Ahmed “ZE1SH” El Sheikh. 

According to the announcement, Tanizhq has been benched proactively until the investigation of the incident resolves. In order to gain “full visibility” of the situation and its context, Team Vitality is reportedly having constructive discussions with both, Riot Games and Freaks4U management. Meanwhile, assistant coach Harry “Gorilla” Mepham has been promoted to take Tanizhq’s place. 

Tanizhq proactively benched

While the said twitter exchange has been since deleted, members of the VALORANT community managed to screenshot Tanizhq’s tweet and share it with the rest of the community. 

The alleged tweet saw Tanizhq, who joined Team Vitality only two months ago, respond to the Assistant Coach for Karmine Corp Ahmed “ZE1SH” El Sheikh, calling him a “racist cockroach” and ending the message with a middle finger emoji. The message read: 

“Firstly, it’s a tweet to let people know we aren’t playing on a stage, which I have been asked about a lot as people assume it’s a LAN match. 

Secondly, stay tf out of my mentions you racist cockroach. The amount of hate you incited against Indian people should be a disgrace to KC.”

After an instant backlash from the community, Tanizhq deleted the Tweet and made his Twitter account private. ZE1SH followed with his own Twitter statement, saying that he will let the Admins and Riot take care of the situation and that there’s no need to escalate in hate or insults. 

Who is Tanizhq? 

Tanzihq is a former Overwatch coach and manager who moved into VALORANT back in 2020. Prior to joining Vitality in April 2022, he served as a coach for multiple teams, including Giants, SuperMassive Blaze, OG, Team Heretics and Inferno. 

His biggest achievements in professional VALORANT include leading Team Heretics towards multiple wins at A and B-tier tournaments and the 1-4th place at the VALORANT Champions Tour 2021: Europe Stage 1 Challengers 2.

Toxicity in esports 

Esports and gaming communities are known for their toxic behaviour, and such cases of toxicity among esports coaches or managers are not by any means rare. For example, the Co-Founder and CEO of TSM Andy “Reginald” Dinh is currently under investigation by Riot for the alleged verbal abuse and misclassifying of employees

Team Vitality commented on the matter of toxicity in esports in its statement: 

“We will continue to actively fight toxicity on our channels and among our supporter groups. We expect that all teams, competition organizers and publishers will fight on our side with the same sense of responsibility.”

Header: Team Vitality