tabseN: "It was a slap in the face to get [our spot] pulled back, but it was just motivation for us"

BIG are one win away from the Elimination Stage after a superb comeback against Virtus.pro.

After an undefeated run through the RMR, BIG thought they had their place in the second stage of the Major secured, until a mid-RMR rulebook fix meant the seeding was decided by the Valve ranking rather than RMR results, and caused BIG's spot to be taken from them.

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BIG have made clear their disappointment about the decision, but they had to shake it off heading into the Major. "For us, it was a slap in the face that we got pulled back from the [Elimination Stage], but to be fair, it was just motivation for us," Johannes "⁠tabseN⁠" Wodarz said to HLTV.

Now with a hard-earned 2-1 record, they are one win away from making it through the Opening Stage anyway. They fought back from 4-11 down against Virtus.pro for their second victory after a saved M4 in Jon "⁠JDC⁠" de Castro's hands kicked off a nine-round run on the CT side of Vertigo.

"It felt like we were never clicking, we were not on the same page, everyone was struggling," tabseN said. "In the end, it's a relief that we somehow won one round to come back."

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

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What a comeback. Without JDC's play in that save round, this would probably never have happened. Tell me about how that kicked off the run and how you made it happen in the end.

Woah. Crazy game. To be fair, I don't know, it felt like we were never clicking, we were not on the same page, everyone was struggling with some moves, with communication.

In the end it was just a relief that we somehow won one round to come back. I told JDC, 'Hey, you never play this position, but just flow the round, get some movement, try to get some kills,' and fortunately it worked out. In the end we also had really good holds on B, which made this work, and I'm just really happy that we came back once again.

I don't think anyone expected FlyQuest to come in with such a dominant performance; you struggled in the first half of Nuke yesterday. How difficult was it to reset from that going into today?

After watching the game with my teammates, we just told ourselves, 'Hey, it was not us.' We were not playing Nuke at our level, we were just playing really badly individually, our protocols and routines were not there. It felt like we had really good tools to play the T side, and they caught us off-guard, they made good calls, and I think dexter also played really well. He found really good holds.

As you said, no one expected them to win, but I knew they were a very good team. They beat us in Atlanta, they were also beating tier-one teams, and they create a lot of problems for tier-one teams. I feel they somehow found a really good groove, and I think they will also go far. They believe in themselves.

For us, it was like, shake it off, fuck it, Nuke, it won't be the map against VP, we don't care, now we focus on our next map. We tried to have a good game plan on T, but it didn't work at all, we were just struggling. In the end, it is really important that we always believed, because one round can change everything in MR12.

Date	Matches
Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 Opening Stage
02/12/2024	BIG 04:00 FURIA	Match

Going into the series, I'm sure it feels like you're only getting back to where you were supposed to be in the first place after getting that spot taken away. Are you confident you can make it happen in the end?

Definitely. We were really confident. For us, it was a slap in the face that we got pulled back from the [Elimination Stage], but to be fair it was just motivation for us. We were like, 'Yeah, it doesn't matter.' Now, in the end, it only matters that we get three Ws.

It doesn't matter who we play, we want to show we are capable of beating all these teams, and we did. It was not in a great fashion, but we did. It was a hard game, and we fortunately won it, and I'm really happy that we made it.

Do you also see it as an opportunity to get a bit more playtime against some of these teams? We see that some of these underdogs are pretty strong, what does it mean to get a bit more experience on this stage?

For me, it's really important that we also have a lot of maps. We have different maps going on, we played Dust2, Ancient, now Nuke, Vertigo as well, it's a huge map pool for us where we can improve. Also, playing on the stage, it's not always that we can get used to it. We were a team that needed to play online games a lot, and now we get back into the groove, we played Atlanta pretty well, and now we show pretty good signs here.

It means for me to keep going, to keep believing, and always keep on trusting the process. We are working really hard, our coaching staff kicks us in our asses that we keep on believing and keep on having the same structure so that we can get used to it and feel comfortable, especially in the high-pressure situations, where maybe some players tend to not communicate and forget the routines. Therefore, I'm really happy that we have all these people working with us, and it's not an easy road.