Our Interview With SMB Player Russ – VCT Berlin

After their first victory in the VALORANT Champions Tour 2021: Stage 3 Masters – Berlin versus Paper Rex, we talked with SuperMassive Blaze player Batuhan “russ” Malgaç.

• After a shaky HAVEN performance you had an undisputable victory in BREEZE. Were you expecting to be challenged on HAVEN, the map of your choice? What do you think went wrong?

We honestly didn’t. We let the rounds go to retakes a lot during CT and We didn’t want that but our IGL said so. After that game, before we went on to BREEZE, we talked a lot about not letting the rounds go to retakes and staying on site and we acted on it. We got an impressive victory on BREEZE.

• You looked mentally refreshed on BREEZE and managed to win in a dominant fashion. How did you mentally keep up after that first map?

In Bo3 series, you don’t lose the game after the first match, it goes on. It’s the same in every other sport. You lose a set or they score a goal. The rest is on you to keep your mental up. We think we did that pretty great. We have a big series tomorrow. We’re also hoping to beat them.

• If you had to rate your performance, what would you give it out of 10?

10. Excluding the first map, straight 10. The first map I did a lot of retakes on CT so I’m not docking a point.

• You’ll face Acend in Losers Bracket Final to qualify out of groups. You defeated them in EMEA finals but lost against them in the first game of group stage. What do you think will happen this time?

My thoughts on the series is that it’ll be 50-50. We’ll play a lot better compared to our first game. We’ll see, whoever makes less mistakes will win. This is against top teams, against weaker teams you can recover from some mistakes but this is not the case against big teams. Once you make a mistake, it’s game over.

• You’ve been competing online for a long while. Now you’re playing in a huge, important LAN event. How does that make you feel?

It feels incredible but we faced a lot of technical problems because we played the first game. If it was like what it is now, we could’ve had different results but we’re not making excuses about that. To tell you the truth, the game we’re playing right now is up a level compared to our first day on stage. Like in the first match, there was a lot of background noise so it was hard to hear enemy sounds. We had to play with the headsets they gave us. We had issues like that but now it looks like they fixed those. I think tomorrow’s match will be way better.

• Thanks so much for doing this interview! Would you like to say something to the fans who supported you?

I’d like to thank them and ask that they keep supporting us. Eventually good things will happen.