Cover-Credits:
Valve and Armel
Southeast Asian (SEA) team Aurora has been the center of attention for SEA Dota 2 fans lately due to its last-minute roster change for the DreamLeague Season 22. Earlier, it was announced that mid-laner Armel "Armel" Tabios would not be participating in the tournament. In his place, Artem "lorenof" Melnick of Team Tickles was announced as a stand-in. A Facebook post of Armel welcoming his newborn on his official Facebook page later revealed the reason behind his absence.
However, Ivan "Kidaro" Bondarev joined Janne “Gorgc” Stefanovski’s recent Twitch stream session and said that the real reason for Armel missing the DreamLeague was due to some internal conflict with Anucha "Jabz" Jirawong, the offlaner and team captain for Team Aurora.
Kidaro Claims that Armel & Jabz Did Not Get Along Well
“You know the reason they [Aurora] changed the mid-laner? Cause he [Armel] didn’t get along with Jabz really well,” said Kidaro during Gorgc’s recent Twitch stream, suggesting a whole other reason for Armel’s absence from DreamLeague Season 22. Kidaro claimed that he was told about this information and hoped that the actual reason was Armel's partner had given birth to his child. This claim by Kidaro is certainly baffling and even Gorgc was confused.
On 18th February, Aurora took to X (formerly Twitter) and announced that Armel would be missing the DreamLeague “as he had personal matters to attend to back at home. He will be supporting Aurora from the sidelines for #ESLProTour 22.”
Due to the ongoing “bench and kick” trend amongst the big teams in Dota 2, the Dota 2 community was filled with suspicion about this abrupt announcement days before DreamLeague kicked off. While some interpreted this post as a subtle hint towards Armel’s inevitable departure from the team, other insightful users pointed out that Armel’s partner was in her final stages of pregnancy.
Shortly, after this AFK Gaming’s internal sources were able to confirm that Team Tickle’s lorenof would be the stand-in for Aurora at the DreamLeague Season 22. The Dota 2 community took this post as a hint about who the possible replacement for Armel in Aurora could be.
However, on 25th February, Armel took to Facebook and posted a photo of his newborn and his partner. He captioned the photo in a loving tone, “The heir of my PC has come out, welcome to the world our baby! ❤️” ending the speculations about his absence from the team.
Kidaro’s recent claims of internal conflict with Jabz suggest another alternative to this situation. According to a YouTube comment, this claim was false, and “Armel was joking at some time that his career is on the line because of the Jabz/23 vs Gabbi incident, which was pretty much childish to begin with.” The incident referred to could be Kim "Gabbi" Santos and Nuengnara "23savage" Teeramahanon’s ugly spat online earlier this year. However, Jabz was not involved in this.
It should be noted that Jabz has played with Armel before Aurora too. In 2021, Armel and Jabz played together for Fnatic and they’ve been playing together in Aurora since November of 2023. This suggests a good relationship between the two players and brings up the question of whether there’s any truth behind Kiadro’s claims.
