After reports that Jonathan “John” Perez has joined the starting LA Thieves roster in place of TJHaLy on June 23 –which were later confirmed by Upcomer– TJHaLy has now said that former teammate Cuyler “Huke” Garland was also benched on a June 24 livestream.
Huke and TJHaLy benched on LA Thieves?
The news of TJHaLy moving to the bench isn’t breaking. Yesterday, the official WestR Twitter account revealed that the former starter had joined their team in place of Josiah “Slacked” Berry. The LA Thieves Twitter account remained silent on the subject, but TJHaLy is not staying so tight-lipped.
Early on Thursday while on stream, he revealed that he and Huke were benched and that John was joining the roster, as indicated by today’s report.
TJ confirms @LAThieves benched himself and Huke, and picked up John pic.twitter.com/lBS6Ii049k
— CDL Intel (@intelCDL) June 24, 2021
The big piece of news to take away from the clip is that Huke is apparently off the starting roster. LA first bought out Huke from Dallas back in May. However, he was subsequently benched a few weeks later but then brought back to the starting roster for the Stage 4 Major. He never appeared for the Thieves at the event, though, due to a missed COVID test.
It appears that mishap or something else entirely has caused Huke to yet again fall out of favor with the organization. If TJHaLy is correct, then Huke is moving to the bench for the second time in as many months.
With TJHaLy and Huke on the bench, that only leaves Zack “Drazah” Jordan to take the final starting roster spot. Carlos “Venom” Hernandez, a current substitute for LA, is competing in CDL Challengers. None of this information has been confirmed by any official channels, but with Stage 5 beginning in one week’s time, the Thieves should make an announcement soon.
