Our Interview With MAD Lions Player İrfan “Armut” Tükek

While MAD Lions rewrote European League of Legends history, winning the trophy back-to-back, we talked with the “Turkish Stage Beast“, the two-time TCL and LEC champion, top laner for MAD Lions, İrfan “Armut” Tükek after their 3-1 victory over Fnatic in the grand finals. He answered all our questions from the Gangplank and Mordekaiser picks to who he thinks is going to win TCL.

Esportimes: First of all, congratulations, you became the back-to-back LEC champions! It was a very fun series to watch, I’m sure anyone who watched it will agree with me here. If I felt like that whilst watching the series at home, how did it feel playing it right next to the trophy?

Armut: So actually without a crowd, you just don’t get the “Nice, I’m a champion now” feeling. It’s still a great feeling though, we won again, truly- we really won, I still don’t feel it fully, you know?

ET: So you’re saying the championship feeling hasn’t come to you yet?

Armut: Not yet, I think it’ll come after a couple of days, it usually does.

ET: I recall you saying something similar after last splits finale.

Armut: Yea yea, as I said, it comes after a couple of days.

ET: It really was a fun series to watch and you won 3-1, everyone on MAD showed a stellar performance, barring that second game.

Armut: Haha yea the second game was terrible.

ET: Who do you think was the best player on your team in the series? According to the poll on Twitter, it was you.

Armut: I think Humanoid’s performance was impressive, I think I also played well but I would say either Humanoid or me, I can’t exactly say since I did not watch the matches fully yet.

ET: We saw great performances from both of you throughout the series. I wanted to ask specifically: We just saw Armut GP for the first time in the LEC last week and now it was banned in this series, it twice picked and twice banned. Is Gangplank going to become the next Armut classic alongside Gnar, Jayce and Wukong or is it just played because it’s in the meta?

Armut: I don’t think GP is meta, I just prepared it because it was a really good pick against Fnatic and it worked out wonderfully.

ET: Yes, GP took the team to the next level in my opinion. Speaking of new picks, Mordekaiser was interesting to see and the moment we saw it, we also saw you make the game hell for Adam in the first 15 minutes.

Armut: Yea, it was a terrible pick in my opinion but we already thought, after the Olaf and Darius bans, that Adam did not have a great pick into Renekton, that’s why we took Renekton. We really made draft hard for them, I mean I think we made a great pivot after they banned two top lane champions.

ET: You had Adam two levels and 40 cs down after those respect bans and your showing on top side looked very fun to watch for MAD Lions fans after that. And you won thanks to that, congrats again, now that you’ve won in EU again, is there any team you want to face at Worlds? I would guess you’d want to see Khan against you in the top lane again.

Armut: Yea I want Khan, I don’t know anyone else yet. Either Baho (Japone) or Bolulu will come from TCL, I truly hope they make it into the Groups, I would like to face them honestly.

ET: That would be amazing to see, both a Turkish team making in to the Groups and you facing against that team. Speaking of TCL, who do you think will win the finals? 

Armut: It’s looking like Galatasaray but let’s say with 55 to 45 odds. Galatasaray being 55 and Nasr 45, of course.

ET: So you’re saying it’s really close, anything can happen.

Armut: I mean, it’s not obvious, anything can happen.

ET: To close off, as the back-to-back LEC champion, is there anything you want to say to the people who watched either the Turkish or the English live stream of the finals and to the people who are reading this interview?

Armut: I mean, thanks a lot for your support, I can’t really find something to say honestly, I wanna thank everyone who watches me at home and is happy as me, who’s happy for me, who’s proud of me, thanks a lot.

ET: Once the championship feeling hits, you’ll probably have more things to say as well, thanks a lot for your time, good luck at Worlds.

Armut: Haha, thank you.

As esportimes, we would like to congratulate MAD Lions & Irfan “Armut” Tükek for their stellar performance during the finals and we wish them success in the future.