FLY Bwipo: “C9 5-0s us in scrims and goes to go get Korean fucking barbecue. Like, hello? How can I even focus?”

Q: So how do you feel about the series? Good, bad, ugly?

Bwipo: My games are free, so I don’t know what to tell you. I had no doubt in my mind that the enemy Nexus was going to explode when I played, so I was feeling good.

Q: Thoughts on Gakgos’s performance? He wasn’t in the position he was supposed to have, but still.

Bwipo: I think he was a bit of a passenger at that game. I think, obviously, it was not an easy game to play Rumble in, but I think he just didn’t have the foresight to go for a more beefy Rumble build. I think if he went Merc Treads into Jak’Sho and was a tanky Rumble, I think he would have been pretty effective against the Annie, Aurora, Lucian. Because those characters [usually] can’t really kill beefy characters that well. He would’ve been able to make a bit more space for his team with that kind of build. 

I think he didn’t have the foresight to build it. I think the game was in a free win spot and then we threw at Baron, lost Baron, and the game was hard. But I think ultimately, the draft itself — Rumble is not exactly a character that can carry the game through the traditional, “I push side [lanes], I’m stronger, I walk up, I fight someone,” type of carrying. He’s more like “teamfight happens, good situation occurs, I deal a shitload of fucking damage.” 

The Atakhan situation, he pretty much carried by himself. They all jumped on him, he killed two or three people, basically put them to 1 HP, secured Atakhan for the team. I think he had moments. Definitely, I think there’s room for improvement, but ultimately… there [were] just not the discussions about putting him in. 

I think they just decided to put him in because all of the meta characters that he plays very well are all open, and I have a history of not really playing Gwen and Ambessa. I made a judgment call that in the drafting [for] Game 3, it was necessary to lock in Ambessa. So that’s what I did. And I’m happy I performed reasonably well. 

Q: Do you see those two styles as the distinction between you and Gakgos? Being strong on side lanes vs. being the “teamfight glue” who helps the team win?

Bwipo: No, I think he needs to be able to do what I do, because that’s actually the hard part. I think that when your teammates are creating space for you as a top laner, and you can roll in and kill everyone with a champion like Aatrox, Ambessa, whatever it is, then you’re just getting carried. That’s how I think. Ultimately, top laners are the strongest characters on the map, and you need to be able to be the first man in. And you may die. That is not a problem, but you got to deal the most damage when you’re the one basically creating the fight around you. 

I think that’s the skill in playing top lane, and I think that’s a really important trait to have as a top laner, because I think that ultimately you are the role that has the capacity to do that more than any other role. Whether you’re playing Sion, whether you’re playing Ambessa, Gwen — it doesn’t matter. I think ultimately he does it really well on Ambessa and Gwen, and these are the characters that he should be playing on stage. 

I think we end up blinding Rumble, but I think we should just play Gwen or Ambessa blind, and just let him play into Rumble if need be. That is my opinion.

Q: People have said you guys FF scrims fast, Damonte said on PROS that the cracks in mental and trust are showing. Thoughts?

Bwipo: I’m inclined to agree [in some ways]. I think that, ultimately, we hold ourselves to a higher standard than other teams in the LTA — when we think the game state is very difficult to play or losing, then we aren’t going to [mess] around and pretend like the enemy team is trash at the game and can’t end, which is reality half the time. That’s what most of the LTA teams are doing. I don’t know what to tell you, “get good”? […]

“Every game is winnable,” from their perspective, [but] our perspective is like, “Well if we’re playing on the other side of this, then we’re gonna fucking destroy them — we should just move on, because this is not a game worth playing.”

I think that’s why people think that we have weak mental and our preparation is poor, but I think that out of any team and every team in the LTA — and I’ll say this very clearly so everyone understands — we have the strongest mental, and we try the fucking hardest when it comes to winning a lost game [on stage].

If they want to judge us on how we perform in scrims, that’s fine. We’ll see you on stage. Apparently the cracks were not showing at all. Apparently you got 3-0’d, pretty much. I mean sure [it was 3-1, but] you got 4-0’d, basically — in my book, even when we played our sub — so I don’t know what to tell you. You can cope as much as you want, but this is the reality.

Q: That makes sense — like Game 2 against TL. You wouldn’t need to practice for that situation in scrims, right?

Bwipo: You gotta have creativity. You gotta know your character well. You’re not gonna practice the same situation. Like, I’m playing Singed. The Ziggs face checking, or sitting in the red buff bush and then me flashing over the wall, or me going for the large flank — this is not something you need to practice on your scrim. You know that you can do this or you don’t know. You can play 100 scrims, and if you never thought about doing that, you’re not gonna just magically just wake up and think about it in your scrim. I mean, maybe you will, I don’t know. But my point is, I don’t think we are a weak mental team on stage, where it counts. 

I think that in scrims, […] we are not here to waste our time, and we are not here to play games so that other teams can feel better. […] I’ll give you an example. C9 5-0s us in scrims and goes to go get Korean fucking barbecue. Like, hello? How can I even focus? The enemy team celebrates winning a scrim day against us 5-0? Are you serious? What is this league, bro? Like, are you guys even trying? How can you even focus when you are celebrating winning a 5-0 scrim day?

We don’t even get Korean barbecue for 3-0ing a team on stage. That’s what I’m trying to say. You know what I mean? It just doesn’t make sense. The amount of mental [hoops] these teams go through just to try and pretend like they are equals or whatever is just crazy. 

I’m saying that all this talk is making us even better — that’s all I’m saying. I think if they just shut the fuck up, play their own game, and try their best with drafts that they’re good at, it’s not a problem. But yeah, if you lock in Game 4, you load in, you give me some first pick and lock in Gnar, you’re gonna go home. I don’t know what to tell you. This was written in the stones, bro. I don’t know what to tell you. Like, let’s focus on making sure we actually prepare for the team we’re playing against and stop focusing about our mentals, shall we? I play real League of Legends on stage, but what I saw today was just completely uninspiring. I don’t know what to tell you.

Q: The other part was that the other players — who aren’t carrying, like Inspired and Busio — are weaker, or being left to the side; they’ve warped the team around themselves and don’t let anyone else carry.

Bwipo: I think that ultimately, without divulging too much… Today, for example, the enemy team kept clicking on me when I picked characters that they couldn’t kill. So they couldn’t win, because my support and jungle were just having a free game every time they used their resources to attack me. I think that ultimately, when you can […] bait resources and create man advantage somewhere, that your teammates can create advantages out of this, and this is where playing well comes into play, right? 

You can either be the guy that baited people to gank you, and then you give an opportunity to the rest of your team, which I think that our jungler and support use extremely well — they play very well individually. Or they can do it, and then the laners will carry. I think that ultimately, in our team, the way we function is, it’s usually either Quad baiting something, or me baiting something, or Massu baiting something. And then the opportunity falls into the hands of the jungler and support because […] we have stronger laners across the board most of the time. 

Like today, Quad made Palafox his complete bitch. It was unplayable mid. I couldn’t believe what was happening mid — every time I looked at mid, Palafox couldn’t breathe. So it was just like a complete free win every game, because the enemy team had to use so many resources to try and help him. And when they did, our jungle and support have tempo, and they can make a good play. That’s how it works. 

A lot of teams just load in with the mindset of, “We need to use our tempo to help X player because this is just how it is.” Which is not a bad thing. It’s just usually, and especially today, for example, I think that they ended up having to use their tempo a bit too much around mid. And in fact, in Games 1 and 4, they didn’t. Actually Games 1, 3, and 4. Quad just spawned in with like what, 30 CS lead, 40 CS lead, 50? […]

He was just crushing mid, and then they decided not to use tempo to help, which meant that Quad was just destroying him 1v1 and making the game very easy for us to play. If you tell me today [that] it was just support-jungle gap — no, I think it was a complete mid gap. And I think that’s why every game was super easy.

Q: He won player of the series.

Bwipo: Good, yeah, he deserved it. Because I think he played extremely well today, and I think that that’s what I’m saying, right? Most teams there will use their jungle-support to stop Quad from doing that. Today’s series, they said, “Well, we can’t, because we’re playing against FlyQuest. If their support and jungle have tempo, it’s unplayable.”

Ultimately, I think the solution most teams had, and the reason why that is the narrative, is because people were using their tempo to stop Quad, Massu, or me from getting leads in their lanes. And that’s why the jungle-support on the enemy team looked like they couldn’t play the game, or they were just heavily outperformed. They were, but I do think that comes from lanes. I think that support and jungle usually need some kind of lane gap in order to really dominate a game or run away with the game, because they’re getting tempo from that gap.

Q: That reminds me of T1. Doran and Faker are probably the GOATs of baiting plays on side lanes and letting their jungle + support run the map. How much does FLY learn from those teams right now?

Bwipo: Yeah, sure. I think ultimately, pretty much every single time that Gen.G [and] T1 plays [a] best of five — if you include coaching staff, at least five out of seven PCs have that series open when I come into the office the next morning. So I would say quite a bit. 

We have discussions about it, actually. I had an in-depth discussion with Mithy, like the very next day, about swaps and what they do and what we do. We compare it and stuff, how we play it and what we want to do. I’m not really someone that VOD reviews super intensely, but I will always double check elements of the game that I feel like I’m not playing well. I think I’m a bit unique [in] that I kind of just play my own game, but I think everyone else on my team is always watching VODs and studying from the best in the world. I think literally every other player and coaching staff does that.

Q: Any good luck message to C9 for 100T?

Bwipo: I mean, I would have laughed my ass off if they lost to DSG. If they lose to 100 Thieves, it will still be funny, but not as funny.

Q: And, final question, any message for the haters?

Bwipo: I don’t mind. Like I said, I don’t mind. I’m very confident in my team. I think we are beatable, 100 %. Every game, every best of five I show up to, I expect to lose at least a little bit, you know what mean? Whether it’s a little bit in lane, or something that goes wrong, I expect mistakes to happen. Some will cost us the game, some will not, right? 

I think the biggest part of being a pro player is to expect mistakes and then learn how to deal with them, because you’re a human being. Everyone. There’s 10 human beings playing, mistakes are coming. Question is how you handle them. 

So you can pray on our downfall. I don’t mind. I think we’re due, to be honest with you. The biggest concern for me is that we haven’t had a real loss in a while now. 

I definitely think that C9 is the best equipped to beat us. I think that 100 Thieves are having a resurgence, and I hope that they are able to perform at a high level too. I think a lot of their players are kind of burning out on their last bit of fuel, because they know they’re going to be free agents next year. So I love that, I’m going to be completely honest with you. That’s what made League of Legends so exciting, back when you had relegation and whatnot. 

And that’s what really got me into the game in the first place. It’s those do or die moments. Like, who are you when everything and nothing is on the table, you know what I mean? It’s all on the table. Either you get a job next year, or you don’t. Let’s see who you are. And I think that’s a beautiful thing, so I’m super excited to see them play.

I’m giving the best of props to players like Dhokla individually. As much as they want to look at us, I want them to look inside themselves and be the best versions of themselves. Because if you don’t bring that, you’re fucking losing. So let’s see the best version of teams, and let’s have a great showing at Texas. 

Q: Actually, you play another series before qualifying for Dallas.

Bwipo: I’m going to Dallas either way, as far as I’m understanding, because it’s a separate tournament.

Q: No, it’s only the finals weekend of the cross-conference stage. Also, you have to leave, I’m in trouble for taking too long in the interview.

Bwipo: Okay, well one last question. So this next best of five, if we win it we play one more best of five in the studio, right? 

Q: If you win next week, you’re first seed from LTAN and guaranteed Worlds + Dallas, and you’ll either play 2 or 3 more Bo5’s after next week.

Bwipo: Wow, what the hell? That’s so complicated. Okay, I had no idea. I thought we were qualified for Dallas. […] Okay, well, fair play. I guess there’s more to it. All right, well, I’m excited to play then. Like I said, I hope they bring their best selves, because that’s what I’m excited for.