AURA part ways with roster amidst coaching payment dispute between Zhenn and Warden
On September 17th, Shawn "Zhenn" Knapp announced that his team had parted ways with AURA allegedly due to an "internal conflict on payment" between himself and former BLUEJAYS coach Matthew "Warden" Dickens.
D2Dust2.us22 Sep 2026 · 1 min read
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The post did not go into detail regarding the issue between Zhenn and Warden, however it was seemingly a big enough issue to cause a rift between the ESEA Main team and the organization they had represented since the start of the year.
According to Zhenn, he had been paying Warden a considerable sum out of pocket to coach his team, hoping to learn from Warden and his years of experience coaching top NA teams.
However, Zhenn said that he was ultimately disappointed in the quality and frequency of coaching sessions given by Warden in the first two months.
Louis This created issues between Warden and Zhenn as the latter had verbally agreed to pay Warden for August.
Although AURA were not a party to the agreement, Warden went to the organization to try and resolve the payment issue, with AURA compensating him to avoid further drama.
After this the organization dropped the team seemingly due to the payment issue reflecting poorly on the squad as the dispute maybe the players' "dirty laundry" the organization's problem.