ZywOo: "I started to have a bit of an ego to show people what I'm capable of"

Vitality's star man wanted to prove that IEM Sydney was a mere bump in the road.

FaZe's 18-match (13 on LAN) winning streak has been broken following a 2-0 defeat to Vitality in the grand final of the BLAST Premier Fall Final, with Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut receiving his 17th HLTV x 1xBET MVP award.

"We did the same thing with Nuke and NAVI in 2021, so I think the Royal Arena is good for us to break streaks," ZywOo told HLTV after the final.

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ZywOo earns BLAST Fall Final MVP

There were doubts around ZywOo after his four-map CS2 debut at IEM Sydney ended in elimination, especially amid Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool's strong start in the new game, but those have been dispelled after he posted a tournament-high 1.35 rating in Copenhagen.

In addition to praising William "⁠mezii⁠" Merriman, ZywOo also went over the comeback on Nuke and explained how he responded to talk around his level on CS2 after IEM Sydney.

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Congratulations on the win. You get mezii in and immediately get your first win. How was it from your point of view to get to play your first tournament with him and be able to win it?

First of all, it's a pleasure to play with him even if we have only known him for two weeks now. He's a really good guy, you cannot imagine. He even had a rough game and you can see that he's chilling and playing his game. He's never tilted, he's just being himself inside of the game, and I think it's helping a lot to be what he is now and even for the future to win more trophies.

Replacing Magisk, I think it has to be a lot of pressure on his shoulders because he's replacing a four-time Major winner, a lot of trophies, but he's playing well, he had good information, he's talking a lot.

Tell me about Nuke and making a pretty big comeback happen to win the series in two. Tell me about how you did it, it looked like at the end that eco win was really important.

After we were losing 7-3, I guess, I think every time we aren't thinking about the score, we just play our game and keep this in mind. The main thing we always say in Vitality is to never give up and to believe in ourselves until the end. That's what we did in halftime, just to keep believing. We know we have a strong T side, and we know what we are capable of, so that's what we talked about.

How much does it mean to break FaZe's streak?

Actually, I don't think we thought about that before the game. We didn't think about breaking the FaZe streak or anything, we just came here and did our best because we know they are really strong. We know if we start to think like this, we may have more pressure, so we didn't think about breaking the streak. After all, of course it's a good feeling, I think we did the same thing with Nuke and NAVI in 2021, so I think the Royal Arena is good for us to break streaks. I think it's really good to do it.

People were a bit quick to judge you after Sydney, but obviously it was just four maps and you didn't have the best start. People were saying you're not as good in CS2, but you have the MVP and you were back at your best. Does that mean anything to you, to be able to prove them wrong?

We had a lot of problems in the team after Sydney, we had a lot of things on our mind, so obviously we didn't play our best. After that, I didn't watch Twitter or anything, but I knew people would start to speak about my level in the new game, and I think I started to have a bit of ego to show them what I'm capable of. It was just the beginning and I just wanted to show them that even if we fail one tournament, it doesn't matter. If you think you can still do it, you can do it. It was on my mind before joining this tournament that I would do my best, and even if I'm bad or good, I'll do my best for my team, and I think I did great.