Ex-Dallas Empire star ‘Crimsix’ is heading to New York with ‘Clayster’ — It wasn’t an easy process

Ian “Crimsix” Porter received a question during this Call of Duty League offseason that he saw as a slap in the face.

The winningest Call of Duty player in the history of the esport, who announced his signing with the New York Subliners Friday after two years with the Dallas Empire, had to argue his way during contract discussions.

They weren’t going well.

Envy Gaming and Dallas Empire owner Mike Rufail had an asking price that other CDL teams weren’t willing to meet. Porter wasn’t a fan of the reasoning.

“I had orgs asking me ‘why get you when we can get a full team?’” Porter said. The 37-time major winner and three-time world champ was baffled.

“Because that team is going to be [expletive],” he said, referencing a synonym for manure.

It’s not hard to connect the dots as to why Porter would want to play for New York, though Porter said Rufail had to lower the asking price. Ex-Empire star James “Clayster” Eubanks was already there, and those two have known each other since they were in middle school.

The two veterans are old for esports standards. Porter, 28, and Eubanks, 29, won a world title together with Dallas in 2020. But Eubanks alone wasn’t going to be enough for Porter to play for the Subliners.

That’s saying a lot considering he didn’t know if he’d find a team at all.

“Not bragging or anything, but I’m the best Call of Duty player there’s ever been. I’ve literally transformed teams,” Porter said. “I bring more to the table than any individual player. I can make any team good, and I can make a good team great.

“But nobody wanted to buy me or put that number up. To me, it felt like a slap in the face.”

Why New York?

Eubanks has called Porter the yin to his yang. Porter and the Empire actually wanted Eubanks to return to Dallas in the middle of the recent CDL season, but the Subliners were far too successful to let that happen.

The Empire made Porter a restricted free agent shortly after their third-place finish at Champs — more on what went wrong on Empire later.

This was the opportunity Porter was looking for.

“I told [Eubanks], “Clay, I want to play with you. I really do,’” Porter said. “But, I didn’t want to go to this team and have one top-tier sub and not two.”

Porter had the Subliners and Los Angeles Guerrillas as options. Both had one elite sub player — Paco “HyDra” Rusiewiez in New York, Cuyler “Huke” Garland in Los Angeles.

Porter made his pitch simple. He was going to follow Travis “Neptune” McCloud. The ex-Florida Mutineers player impressed Porter and showed untapped potential. McCloud went to New York and Porter followed.

Just because Porter has his team doesn’t mean he didn’t learn about himself in the process. He was worried he was going to be forced into retirement because teams didn’t like the price for him.

Now he wants to be the best version of himself. Take a look at what happened in Dallas.

Fall of an Empire

All things considered, Porter felt the Empire’s results this last season were solid. A pair of second-place finishes at majors and a third-place finish at Champs doesn’t sound like a team that struggled to find their synergy all season.

“I actually can’t believe we played as well as we did,” Porter said. “The entire year we were never a team.”

The first bit of drama came when Garland was dropped from the starting lineup and eventually sold to the Los Angeles Thieves. Garland didn’t have much of a season after limited playing time with the Thieves, but is still considered one of the most talented sub players on the planet.

Porter felt dropping Garland was a team decision, and the right decision, but didn’t agree with him being sold without another player arriving in Dallas in exchange.

“[Rufail] made zero mistakes in my book until that point,” Porter said.

While the Empire getting another player would have been ideal, trades in Call of Duty esports are rare, Rufail said. And the team camaraderie with the Empire was faltering to a point which waiting too long wasn’t an option.

“In an environment where we have to fix our team dynamic and chemistry quickly in the middle of the season, a trade, in my opinion, would be extremely hard to execute, if not nearly impossible,” Rufail told The Dallas Morning News. “I did what I had to do in transact, move Cuyler off the team and bring in a new player.”

Porter took serious ownership of his own shortcomings though. He didn’t have fun on Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War. It was his least favorite CoD he ever competed in.

“I definitely made it miserable for my teammates because I wasn’t having fun playing, that I will admit,” Porter said. “I felt like I needed a team. It’s my team vs. the world. Clay went to the Subliners and then we barely texted each other or hung out. I need a group around me willing to go to battle.”

Porter doesn’t know exactly how many years he has left. At 28 years old, he’s entering the twilight of his competing career.

“I think it’d be a delusion to say anything over three years,” Porter said. “I just have so much fun doing this. I’m almost twice the age of some of these newcomers.”

The Dallas Empire haven’t completed their own roster as of Friday, and it’s been quiet on their end after news of talks about Envy absorbing the OpTic brand broke in late August.

But whenever Dallas and New York play one another next, it will be a mirror matchup.

Find more Empire coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.

Find more esports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.