SkinRave sign BLUEJAYS roster

3-9-2025 20:15

The North American squad has made an organizational switch.

SkinRave have completed the signing of the former BLUEJAYS roster, headlined by ex-Complexity AWPer Paytyn "⁠junior⁠" Johnson.

The team is ranked No. 45 in the Global VRS and eighth in the Americas standings, meaning they are currently set to receive a Stage 1 invite for the upcoming Starladder Budapest Major.

BLUEJAYS, who had a turbulent period in terms of roster changes in recent times, have found a rich vein of form after the summer break.

They reached the semi-finals of CCT NA S1 and PrizePicks NA Revival S8, reached the final of the recent ESL Challenger League S50 NA Cup 1, and won the Dust2.us Eagle Masters S3.

The team has also received an invitation to the ESL Challenger League S50 NA Cup 2, where they will hope to go one better and move themselves closer to ESL Pro League S23 qualification.

SkinRave are:

Paytyn "⁠junior⁠" Johnson
Matthew "⁠Cryptic⁠" Whitmore
Anthony "⁠CLASIA⁠" Kearney
Colby "⁠Walco⁠" Walsh
Maks "⁠laxiee⁠" Andryei

Tommy "⁠Axed⁠" Ryan (coach)

wtf where timbermen

2025-09-03 20:16

6 replies

hahahahaah

2025-09-03 20:44

who cars

2025-09-03 22:35

4 replies

@den1dea

2025-09-04 01:05

3 replies

sup bro

2025-09-04 04:05

2 replies

awaiting this mans arrival

1 reply

can't wait

2025-09-04 04:09

nice i guess

huge news

tier 500, bookie fixing team

32 replies

junior my favourite Matchfixer electroNic fans arent the smartest

2025-09-03 20:18

31 replies

Delusional if you think all failed prospects in NA don't matchfix.

2025-09-03 20:19

30 replies

There’s not even enough money in NACS to make match fixing worth it lol

2025-09-03 21:09

26 replies

You don't see how contradictory this statement seems? It is the poor scenes that are even more likely to matchfix, look at bulgarian scene..

2025-09-03 21:10

24 replies

Eh. I watch almost every single t2 na match and it definitely never looks like match fixing. Usually you can tell by the results, and the results are pretty consistent. Also, since match fixing killed quite possibly one of our most exciting rosters ever, we take that shit seriously. It would get called out instantly. The main thing that’s plaguing t2 NACS rn is the bettors ddossing our players

2025-09-03 21:13

23 replies

I know of games where fixing has 100% happened in low tier NA games. Map trades happen really frequently and it is no secret what old timbermen players were doing. Why you think they were alone in these activity and other teams and players weren't also?

2025-09-03 21:14

16 replies

You can just tell from the results, especially if they’re consistent over a certain amount of time. I’d be naive to say I can 100% guarantee match fixing doesn’t happen, but atleast at the t2 scene it doesn’t. T3 and below I’d definitely see it happening. Like the esea main or advanced teams maybe. Getting Info would be the most viable candidate because they’re unsalaried and ex timber men, but I think those guys are actually trying to get signed by a legit team just by watching how they play and their results. They got very close to qualifying for the major last split, and if I’m not mistaken they’re on a decent chance of making this one. If they’re match fixing while that’s at stake, then I’d be surprised to say the least.

2025-09-03 21:18

14 replies

I wish I could still watch and think CS was as clean as your vision of it is. I regret ever allowing myself to get tied into the darker truth of the behind the scenes but now that I have lived with it I can see it so clearly. NA is no different than Asian/European/MiddleEast scene, there is fixing that happens every day and it keeps all of the scenes alive to lesser extend in some but in other scenes (Asia/ME) it is the driving factor for those regions to stay alive.

2025-09-03 21:21

13 replies

Yeah I’m just coping and hoping that our boys in t2 (the ones good enough at having a shot at being a t1 player) aren’t stupid enough to throw that all away for match fixing pocket change. But unfortunately, some people are just short-sighted and want the instant profit. I do think, however, that if we get more salaried teams and real orgs, there will be less match fixing because our players will have salaries and not have to worry about money

2025-09-03 21:23

12 replies

I guess taking in these orgs that pay with dirty gambling money is a lesser of the evils at hopes of redeveloping your scene. Matchfixing with a bad image of your top teams already will only stunt the growth so if skinrave are legit and this team thrives it will inspire others to follow the same path and maybe a big org will pick some players up again? C9/COL...

2025-09-03 21:39

11 replies

Yea that’s how I see it. As for Col, I wouldn’t hold my breath for them picking up a team anytime soon. Jason lake is amazing for our scene, but unfortunately after buying Col back they went broke and couldn’t find any sponsors that would right the ship. As for c9, who the fuck knows what they’re up to lol

2025-09-03 22:04

10 replies

its hard to make a NA team that can even make majors. there are a lot of SA t2 teams that are way more talented than the NA t2 ones and they are the same region in the VRS, which is a bit fucked up. this is probably why C9 is not doing anything. they had their chance with european rosters like ex navi junior, iberian soul, etc, don't really know why they did not take ex navi junior as they're promising and finding a 5th player wouldn't have been hard. also, they did an incredible job with the last C9 CIS iteration. selling 4 players/6 (coach included) after 1 season and major reached in that season is crazy work.

2025-09-03 23:25

9 replies

Lol. That’s just not true. The least you can do is show our boys some respect. 4/6 teams being NA in top 10 for americas completely nullifies your take. If you’re gonna hate on NA, at least have your facts straight. hltv.org/valve-ranking/teams/2025/septem.. And why would our legacy orgs want to pick up an unproven eu 5 stack that have a small chance of making the major, when the competition in na is easier? And c9 did a good job with their cis roster? You can’t be fuckin serious lmao

2025-09-04 00:10

8 replies

From an org profiting standpoint it was outstanding job. They got whole Gambit roster, coach included, for 1 mil. Selling sh1ro alone covered it and possibly more (we only know that it was 7 digits, so could be a bit more here, but unlikely as expensive as Electronic). And then there's selling of nafany, interz and Hobbit. Electronic and Perfecto were expensive, except VP were stupid enough to pay 1.5 mil for Electronic alone. Then there'd also HeavyGod, Icy, Boombl4 and Ax1le sellings. And they made 4 majors with 2 different rosters during that time, one of them playoffs with no AWP and one with very recently rewamped team with 2 new players to even that level. Sure, they maybe never reached top tier tournaments and showed results there. But from financial standpoint, if we assume wages were completely covered by sponsor money or something, it was a net positive, and a pretty big positive.

2025-09-04 06:00

7 replies

I’d agree from a financial standpoint to a certain extent. They also haven’t re-entered cs after that iteration, so they haven’t made any more money. So you could argue that the damage they did to their brand of being an “NA” team would be a financial loss too. And then on top of the money they made, they just dipped from the scene instead of reinvesting even just a smidge of that into an NA team which would cost them Pennies on the dollar

2025-09-04 06:04

Funnily enough, I don't remember any significant backlash for them not having NA team, Liquid had way worse crowd reaction, but perhaps that was because according to the rules, they would take the spot they earned as NA to EU by keeping the same core. And because it wasn't comeback of the org with history to the scene after some time. As for costing them little, I'm not sure, on average for the team of the same caliber NA requires more in wages than some russians of the same level, the difference here can be in how big of a name players are/were, especially for Electronic, Perfecto, perhaps Ax1le, Hobbit and Sh1ro, but given the original situation they ended up with, I would not be surprised if they did take a pay cut at the time to even have a pay in the first place, but other than that even Boombl4 came from 1win, the team that currently basically only plays regionally. And sponsors have to want sponsoring that team as well, be it for names of the players and/or the org, new unexplored (for NA org signing russians, I mean) fanbase, that point works 2 ways, and whatever else sponsors think are important. From what I see, the main problem for NA orgs is that venture capital has gone away from esports, not really seeing the return on their investment and scene not moving towards franchises (not all of it, Riot still runs it but apparently there are some cracks in their system as well) and paid streams like TV sports does it.

2025-09-04 06:23

5 replies

The thing that killed NA was Covid/the guaranteed spots at t1 events that heavily favored EU teams. Our smaller orgs didn’t have enough to buy in, so they dropped out. It was basically a miniature form of franchising, which is trash for any competitive scene. That’s why the USA is so behind in global sports. Because we focus on who has the biggest pockets and not the best talent. And tv streaming won’t work for years for cs. They already tried with e league. That’s not even an NA exclusive either. As for picking up an NA team, I wasn’t saying picking up one of the same quality as their cis roster, as I don’t think we have even enough star players to make that possible. I was more saying they could pay like 250k a year to field a decent up and coming na team and build up, but these orgs want instant gratification. C9 has the money and brand value to pick up a cheap na team and make them great, they’d just rather take the easy route (assuming they even want to come back to cs)

2025-09-04 06:38

COVID was a factor, sure. As well as ESL and Blast making their franchises (and Flashpoint tried as well). And while it did had more EU there, it makes sense since most of their event are in EU and they are from EU themselves. While NA had Liquid, Col and ... I guess NRG and EG? What? You didn't expect franchising to have places for "orgs" operated from someone having somewhat rich dad, did you? And NA had like no tournaments at the time worth attending. It was Fragadelphia, which only has the power now thanks to VRS having a fuckton more points for LAN wins, and online qualifiers for some ESL spots here and there basically. And the situation still stands, you have no TOs. The ones you had either had this TV idea that didn't work out (Eleague), or were bought by Activision (MLG). And it's not like you don't have competition of good enough level to develop, you have SA, back then SA was arguably even better than now. And yet they were somewhat separate and have their own bubble to this day, while ou just had no place to play them, unless it was truly a value match for major spots and whatnot. But Covid and this wasn't the only factor. Around the same time 2 more things happened that completely destroyed NA tier-2 to the point it never fully recovered: 1) Valorant release 2) ESIC saying they are investigating ESEA NA matchfixing together with FBI, which in turn made exodus to Valorant that would happen anyway that much stronger. We now know that Valorant tier-2 is a joke and to truly have better position you need to be in franchised org and that FBI didn't care for players and wanted to find and possibly patch loopholes online bookies had that allowed them to operate in states where they shouldn't be able to, but that's hindsight.

2025-09-04 07:25

It wasn’t even because the teams were eu. It was because they had more money to buy in. Blast, ESL, ect don’t care where your team is from, they cared about the highest bidder. Also, I think it’s not really fair to quantify our smaller orgs as being ran by people with somewhat rich dads. It was mainly VC money rushing in, and because the orgs had no clue what the fuck they were doing, they just lit that shit on fire and pissed off the VC givers. So now it’s even harder to get them to come back. That’s why we should just focus on gambling/sportsbook betting companies imo. We had a fairly healthy local scene prior to 2019 as well. You may think the tournaments weren’t worth going to, but they were popular enough here to function. But again, those companies being bought up by people like ESL fucked us. Also, MLG wasn’t bought out by activision, they were bought out by ESL (or one of ESL close affiliates can’t remember exactly) and the guy that ran mlg actually worked for ESL for a while after the merger. Also, the guys that exodused to Val because t2 was getting investigated are probably the ones match fixing so good riddance to them. I’d say more people went to valorant because our smaller orgs dropped out because it wasn’t financially viable for all the reasons said prior. And our boys just wanted paid to game so I can’t really hold it against them, but there was definitely a bunch of match fixing pieces of shit that were part of that mass exodus. I’m just happy the valorant competitive scene is starting to die. Hopefully we get more young guys playing cs instead because they don’t want to play only 12 official matches a season.

2025-09-04 17:59

I didn't exactly mean smaller orgs, I meant semi-mix teams where someone definitely bankrolls it out of their own pocket that at different points of history arguably had more success than said smaller orgs, like Mythic, Ben's Anime Team, Bad News Bears, Swole Patrol, etc. It doesn't have to be a dad, it can be a teammate that made his money early in his career and was smart with it + maybe made money from streaming or something, that kind of teams. But I'm not denying the existence of Rogue, Ghost, Chaos, CLG and whoever else. And maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like those exited even a bit before Covid and all the other things that hit the NA scene. MLG was indeed bought by Activision back in 2016, even wikipedia has it listed en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Gamin.. Other than that, I agree, I guess, except I don't hold that radical position on Valorant. + you guys always were more or less a console esport titles compared to the rest of the world outside of maybe Japan as well. Don't know how PCs doing over there these days, but if it's anything like Japan, then I assume it slowly grows.

2025-09-04 18:11

Chaos, rogue, gen g, ghost, and eunited were our biggest losses of that time period due to the franchising of blast and ESL. They all dropped out from 2019-2020. Chaos stuck around, but Covid put the final nail in their coffin. As for clg, I’m not really sure about them but I think they’ve had financial issues for a while. Didn’t they have to sell off their league of legends LCS spot back then? Idk I could be talking out of my ass. And yea you’re right about activision buying mlg out I must’ve got it confused because the dude running mlg left after the buyout and went to work for ESL instead of activision. And yeah to your final point, we definitely are a console cuck nation, unfortunately. But I will say, more and more people are getting PCs it feels like to me. Maybe I’m just coping but it definitely feels like people are getting more into pc gaming. I think if the dipshit console companies keep raising their prices on them, then eventually people will just say fuck it I’m going all in on a pc if it’s only slightly more expensive. It’s definitely a slow growth, but it’s happening nonetheless so I can’t complain

2025-09-04 18:25

Belarus/Ivan alt spotted.

2025-09-04 08:11

ESIC was literally investigating the T2 NA scene years back, 35 players total most of which jumped to Valorant and nothing happened. It did not get called out, and Carson is currently in NRG after being caught red handed match fixing going against the investigation and serving a 111 day ban.

2025-09-04 01:27

Stopped reading at “years back”

2025-09-04 02:08

Because suddenly NA is above matchfixing? They do it when the scene is alive but now there is less eyes on NA because it is dead now they wont matchfix?

2025-09-04 06:02

#39 #42

2025-09-04 06:05

Already read your comments earlier. Just funny how you won't read his comment at #65 because there is proof of continued matchfixing from NA, years back but separate from the iBP events. This is a trend but you don't want to admit it? I don't understand. Matchfixing is everywhere, it is not just NA problem.

2025-09-04 06:06

You’re comparing a time period in which there was documented proof to a time now where there is no proof other than your “hunch” because “na teams are shit” and “need the money”. Not everyone in t2 is a matchfixer. And that just doesn’t go for na either. You’re coming from the assumption that every low level team is a matchfixer because they aren’t t1. That’s just a pessimistic viewpoint

2025-09-04 06:08

really there always is lol thats just a dumb take no matter what the truth is lmao

2025-09-03 22:09

Bratan, It's NA not Bucharest. They have moral standards

2025-09-04 01:36

Clueless. They have matchfixed in NA scene just like everywhere else.

2025-09-04 06:01

They do, but it's 99% less than EU, and most of the match fixers moved to valo

2025-09-04 11:45

Who signed who

2025-09-03 20:17

life changing

NA is healing

2025-09-03 20:21

I was excited about Bluejays sticker..... ffs... now it's gonna be a complete trash..

2025-09-03 20:22

same wtf, fuck these gamba orgs getting into cs

2025-09-03 20:23

yeah, i actually like the bluejays org... sad

2025-09-04 02:16

Bluejays stickers would have been legendary. I guess we will settle for skinrave stickers

SkinRave logo is pretty good, its just that blue and red are best colors for stickers.

2025-09-03 20:27

We're gonna get """SkinRave""" stickers 😭😭

Is NA back? We're starting to get a lot of salaried teams. Passion UA M80 NRG Blue Jays (If they don't leave) SportsBetExpert SkinRave Wildcard (Is marsborne salaried?)

2025-09-03 20:36

Idk if sportsbetexpert is a salaried team are you sure? A friend of mine plays for it and he is broke as shit

2025-09-03 20:39

You'd know better than me, but there's at least an org behind the team. Could be just support or a small salary

2025-09-03 20:41

who, sbe only have cs team

2025-09-03 20:52

yea we are salaried, also who is your friend LOL

2025-09-03 20:48

He was the other turkish guy (not trojan) when they first came into the scene and played (and won) open9-10 when my team was also there. Now I cant see the roaster so I can’t give you the ign. It was a very long string of letters and numbers last time if i remember correctly

2025-09-04 16:58

they are salaried dust2.us/news/64618/breaking-sportsbetex..

2025-09-03 22:11

I dont remember any of these guys I tried checking the roaster from esea but its greyed out for some reason idk if he is still playing i was checking his ign but i cant. They used to play in open when he played. Now they in advanced idk if they changed the team i cannot see

2025-09-04 16:47

My guess is if they paid to buy out Reck from his contract with M80 they will probably be salaried

2025-09-03 23:54

Well now wildcard and bluejays need to rebuild so I wonder if some of the pros who are inactive are gonna come back Brehze, osee, fang, floppy and the others

2025-09-03 20:47

I hope so

Marsborne is indeed salaried

Why is there a random mongolian on this NA team?

Maybe he lives in NA

2025-09-03 20:45

Hes an NA pro and has been playing T2/3 na for the past 2 years. The same way dea is an NA pro

2025-09-03 20:49

honorary american

Will blowjays rebuild? 3rd complete rebuild from scratch in a year is crazyy

2025-09-03 20:43

Interesting Good luck!

in the future every single team outside of tier 1 will be owned by shitty online casinos or skin sites based in scam coutnries like Belize, Curacao, Cayman Islands etc

and there will still be blind idiots who say match fix is not real

2025-09-03 22:15

team salaried by casino with a Curacao license != matchfixing. look at imperial for example. literally gamdom logo, which is a Curacao based casino.

2025-09-03 23:29

What? It's the unbalanced teams that matchfix

2025-09-04 01:39

Wow Finally junior can throw for even more food

Ahahahaha junior, wtf how much chances this dude can get..

Boooooooooo

Good luck!!!!

2025-09-03 20:50

neat to see more orgs becoming interested in NA CS but lmao the last 8 seconds of that announcement video telling us to "OPEN CASES NOW!" lmfao cornball gamba site

2025-09-03 22:20