iM on career-first MVP: "I had instant goosebumps"

iM laid claim to his career-first MVP medal in IEM Rio after a hard-fought final against MOUZ.

Despite falling short of a tournament win at the BLAST Premier Spring Final just a week before the start of IEM Rio, Natus Vincere headed to Brazil as the event favorites, looking to add to their trophy cabinet their fourth title of 2024.

This time around NAVI were able to live up to expectations, recovering from an uncomfortable group stage where the international side faltered to FURIA in a seeding match to march to the grand finals over Virtus.pro and HEROIC, where Natus Vincere took down MOUZ 3-1 after recovering from a 2-10 deficit in the fourth map of the series.

Following his team's win in Rio de Janeiro, Mihai "⁠iM⁠" Ivan spoke with HLTV regarding his feelings on earning his first-ever MVP medal, the comeback on the fourth map of the final, and how the Romanian rifler is relieved to have a break on the horizon.

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iM, congratulations, fourth trophy of the year and an MVP for you. You just said you didn't expect it, tell me about the feeling right now.

Thank you, I can start with that. I didn't expect the MVP at all, I told you that BanKs told me, I was walking, I was going to the player lounge, and BanKs told me and I had instant goosebumps. I didn't expect it at all. It's pretty amazing I will say, it's amazing that we managed to win in this fashion. We played very good on the first two maps rotating and all of that stuff, everything worked for us.

After that we got very stomped on Mirage, we didn't expect that. We were, how do I say it... expecting to fight back on the third map, but nothing worked for us. Every close... no, wait, that was Ancient (laughs). Bro, we got full stomped on Mirage and after that, on Ancient, even Aleksi said that we were this close to breaking them on CT side. Every time it was one alive, two alive, one alive, very close situations, and that's how we ended up in a 10-2 situation. But we managed to come back, which is fucking crazy.

As you said it was crazy, watching it, you were winning some insane rounds and it was... honestly, it was 10-2 on Mirage, 10-2 on Ancient, it looked like we were headed for a fifth map, so just tell me about that.

To be honest, I was pretty down because on our T side, nothing worked for us. I was going first mostly and dying, and I was pretty down on CT side-

Life of an entry, right?

Bro, it's crazy, trust me (laughs). Aleksi and Andrei [B1ad3] had some good words, they said that we just need to believe, a pistol round and enigma — whenever they force, we call it enigma — first buy round, and then we play from there. We basically were counting on first buy round, second buy round, then we were basically trying to slow-roll them. Then, I don't know, we just came back.

Aleksi had never won an IEM before, this BO5 record has been haunting you too. You won one versus Eternal Fire, by getting another on the board, getting your fourth trophy of the year, what does that mean to you?

It means a lot. Every trophy means a lot for us because, like I said, we are not a team like, for example, FaZe, they have a lot of experience, they know how to play, they know how to react to winning trophies and for us, it's something new even though we are in the finals six times in a row. It's pretty crazy.

For Aleksi, I actually didn't know about this curse, I just saw it in the morning and I was like, 'Hmm (tuts), it doesn't matter.' Because we had a discussion in the practice room of what we need to do, what we don't need to do because we had the experience from the other finals, the ones we lost and the ones we won. This is the first time in a best-of-five that we won the first map, so we started pretty damn good I would say.

You did. When we talked to jL previously, he said that you had this record where across your finals, you got second, then first, then second, first, second, and then this event was lined up for another first. Then he realized after that it could mean second at the Major (laughs). So coming with that in mind, how do you feel after getting this win because it's been grueling for you, you've been in so many finals, it's been tough practicing, jL mentioned it as well. What has that been like and how have you felt with that?

This is true, we were speaking before he had this interview with you, we were joking about it. We saw a pattern like one, one, one and we were calculating like, 'Hmm, if it's like this, what is going to happen?' Like we win Rio, lose Singapore, and we win the Major. It's pretty damn good I would say (laughs).

But jokes aside, we pretty much don't focus on this, we try not to focus on being in the finals six times in a row and so on. We just try to play our best game by game, map after map, and learn from our mistakes.

Can you tell me about your voice being established on the team, because there was a clip that aired before the final started where you were very vocal. You've been a second voice on the team for a while now and your performances skyrocketed as well. How have you felt individually, getting an MVP here and so on?

Like I said, I didn't expect to get an MVP. To be honest, I'm not that guy who's going for MVPs and stuff like this, I like to play more for the team. If I have a good game, okay, will take it, if I have a bad game, maybe I will be more quiet, but I will still do my job. Try to speak, try to connect everyone on the server like you said. This is me, I like to speak a lot, I like to find situations if I see one to do, or what to do on the map, and that's it.

World Final coming up. As I said, grueling schedule, there have been so many events. Do you feel tired, how do you feel leaving this event?

I cannot wait to go back home and sleep. We have, for the first time in I don't know how long... like it's three events, so I would say around one-and-a-half months, maybe two months, I have no clue actually, but the first time in this period that we have a break. Cause every time we're supposed to have a break it's whenever we're losing two games in the group stage and stuff like this, but we still don't have a day off, we have practices. After this long time, a break will be... Ohhh yeah, you can't even imagine.