Seattle Surge announce Karma replacement following CDL retirement Seattle SurgeThe Seattle Surge Call of Duty League franchise has announced that veteran competitor Nicholas \u2018Proto\u2019 Maldonado will be taking the place of Damon \u2018Karma\u2019 Barlow, who announced his shock retirement on June 3. The competitive Call of Duty community is still reeling from the stunning news that one of the greatest players of all time, Karma, has officially retired. However, business must go on for the Seattle Surge, who have already assigned a replacement. Proto, one of the team\u2019s two substitutes, will be slotting into the starting lineup for the rest of the 2020 season, starting from the Minnesota Home Series on June 12-14. \u201cI would like to welcome Proto to the starting lineup,\u201d tweeted coach Joey \u2018Nubzy\u2019 DiGiacomo. \u201cHe\u2019s someone that I have worked with at the beginning of my coaching career, and I\u2019m excited to work with him again throughout the rest of this season. Thank you all for the continued support.\u201d SEATTLE SURGE 2020 STARTING LINEUP: Sam \u2018Octane\u2018 Larew – Bryan \u2018Apathy\u2018 Zhelyazkov – Josiah \u2018Slacked\u2018 Berry – Casey \u2018Pandur\u2018 Romano – Nicholas \u2018Proto\u2018 Maldonado – Of course, the Surge did have the option of going with Ian \u2018Enable\u2019 Wyatt, who was benched midway through the season, temporarily brought back, and demoted again midway through the recent CDL Seattle Home Series. However, according to Joey, the team is \u201cnot in a position\u201d to bring him back to the starting lineup, which is why they\u2019ve opted to go with the only other player they had left on the bench. \u201cIan has been incredibly professional and understanding of [what] our team asks of him throughout this season,\u201d the coach said in a statement. \u201cUnfortunately, we are not in a position to have him join the starting lineup in the interim.\u201d While he hasn\u2019t won a major championship yet in Call of Duty, Proto has been around the competitive scene for several years now, featuring for organizations like Elevate, UYU, and Enigma6 Group. Arguably biggest success so far came at the 2018 CWL Championship, where he and his Elevate team finished 7-8th after just edging out the vaunted OpTic Gaming for a spot in bracket play. He was announced, alongside Pandur, as the Surge\u2019s two required substitutes prior to the 2020 CDL season, and he\u2019s been on the bench since then. His first taste of CoD League action will be at the upcoming Minnesota Home Series, which was supposed to take place June 5-7 but was delayed by a week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seattle Surge announce Karma replacement following CDL retirement Seattle SurgeThe Seattle Surge Call of Duty League franchise has announced that veteran competitor Nicholas \u2018Proto\u2019 Maldonado will be taking the place of Damon \u2018Karma\u2019 Barlow, who announced his shock retirement on June 3. The competitive Call of Duty community is still reeling from the stunning news […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31098\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}