woxic: "After left-hand came back, I regained my confidence"

"We won against the champions and No. 2, why not win this tournament?" the Turkish sniper said of Eternal Fire's mentality after eliminating G2.

Eternal Fire have been in resurgent form in the past two months, bagging consecutive second-place finishes at BetBoom Dacha Belgrade and ESL Pro League Season 20 to reach a personal peak of No. 7 in HLTV's world rankings.

The Turkish side enjoyed an early moment of success at the start of the year with a run to the playoffs of PGL Major Copenhagen but struggled for consistency and have only recently started to turn things around.

Two weeks after their runners-up finish in Malta, Eternal Fire stumbled in their return to action with a narrow loss to Astralis in their opening match of IEM Rio. A dominant 2-0 over BLAST Fall Final champions G2 has injected an immense booster of confidence into Engin "⁠MAJ3R⁠" Küpeli's troops, however, with Özgür "⁠woxic⁠" Eker explaining to HLTV how his team reset from the Astralis loss to defeat G2 in such one-sided fashion.

The sniper also touched on Eternal Fire's resurgence and his individual excellence, explaining how the return of the left-handed viewmodel has helped him find his comfort and play his best Counter-Strike again.

If you cannot see the SoundCloud embed above, you can listen to the interview here.

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Congratulations woxic, 2-0 over G2, pretty dominant 2-0. Did you expect to win in that fashion?

Firstly thank you for your congrats. Personally, I wasn't expecting it after our last performance against Astralis. We had communication issues, maybe because it was a best-of-one — if it was a best-of-three maybe we could have won the game, but anyway it was best-of-one and we lost it.

After that, playing against the last champion, I wasn't expecting it was going to be 2-0, but we played so well. As you said we dominated the game. Otherwise I was thinking it would be 2-1 for them or 2-1 for us.

As you said, you lost to Astralis yesterday, not the start to the tournament you would have wanted. Can you tell me about what went wrong and getting off to that start after having such good performances before this event?

After we played against Astralis, we just focused on what we did as a mistake. As I said, maybe because it was best-of-one and best-of-three we could've won after losing the first map. But after we talked about what we did as mentally wrong, we talked about it enough I think and that's why we came and showed up with really good Counter-Strike and teamplay.

For the previous results, lately we are playing really good Counter-Strike and understanding each other well. Also our game plan, strat book, everything is working really well at the moment. Also the individuals are on top, so if we just put the same thing on the same level, I think we're going to have these kind of games and maybe even win a tournament.

This is the main goal for us, but unfortunately we lost in Pro League and BetBoom Dacha. We want to win it, we are deserving in my opinion, but of course your opponent is deserving too. Whoever is better in that game, in that day, is getting the trophy. I hope we can see the arena and we can lift the trophy.

You had this period at the start of the year where you had this rise and now you're starting to come back again. Like you said, the individuals are playing well, your calling is better and so on, but is there anything specific that changed?

Everything is the same in my opinion, from the start of the year until now. People are doing the same things, but when you are having good results and winning against big teams, for example today we won against No. 2 and the last champions.

Tomorrow is going to be a more comfortable game, I'm not saying we're going to beat them, but people as a mindset are going to be more comfortable, more focused, and they will tell themselves from the inside that we won against the champions and No. 2, why not win this tournament? They will come with this mentality and it is different than playing the first against Astralis.

Everything is mental, and if we don't step down from the game and communicate well, not mentally crumble, we can beat anybody. But when things are not going well sometimes, we have an issue inside the team or TeamSpeak, it can go chaotic and it can cost us the game. If we are focused on ourselves to not step down, keep talking even if we're losing 7-0, we can do a comeback and beat anybody.

One thing that has changed is that your performance has gone way up. There has been talks about it improving since the left-hand viewmodel came back into the game, your performance went up, has that been a noticeable difference for you?

Of course, it has changed everything because I have been playing for a really, really long time with left-hand. When the game updated it was a completely different game for me. I understand some players are just changing left and right, you cannot do it in CS2 because movement is not the same like in CS:GO, but for me just playing in the same settings... I am always doing the same settings. For my mouse, crosshair, in-game settings, resolution, everything is the same. When one thing is changing it is completely mentally affecting me.

Now after the left-hand came back, I have been showing really good performances, and also I got my confidence back because when I was playing with right-hand, which is not good for me, I was not killing the people who I need to kill. That's why you are losing your confidence and stepping down from the game, but now when I am peeking somewhere or going somewhere, I am thinking, 'I will kill him,' you know? This is the kind of mentality I have. Also with the boys in the team, helping each other, helping me, it is because of that, the teamwork, everyone's performance went up.

Tomorrow you play The MongolZ, anything about that specific match you want to say?

We lost against them before in a final, it was in India I think, and after that we beat them. That was a really close game, but we can do it again. We've won against better teams, and if we want to play in the final or want to see the crowd, we need to win against them. There is no excuse for it.

We need to keep what we did today against G2, we have to do the same against The MongolZ. You cannot be comfortable, you cannot feel like, 'We beat this team,' we can chill, relax, and win against them, it is not working like this. If we do the same thing, focus up, we can beat them.

How badly do you want to see that crowd?

I really want to see it. I've never been in Brazil, this is the first time, and whatever I hear from the people it is insane, like a football game, like a big derby game. Of course, I was just hearing it from Twitch, like on broadcast, but of course when you are here and playing in front of them, it has to be an amazing feeling and I really want to taste that.