HObbit: “Our goal is to be the best team in the world, it doesn't matter when it's going to happen”

Cloud9 finally ended their streak of losses to FaZe by claiming victory at IEM Dallas, an inspired performance from Sergey “⁠Ax1Le⁠” Rykhtorov playing a key part in helping his side secure a 2-1 victory to advance to the semi-finals.

After the match, we had a quick chat with Abay “⁠HObbit⁠” Khasenov to get his thoughts on finally getting a win over this FaZe roster and what it means to him, as well as some insight into how the team feels bouncing back from their performance at the Major with their wins in Texas.

Let’s start with that win, massive one on stage obviously, beating FaZe of all teams. How are you feeling right now?

We are feeling good for sure, and we all understand that it’s just another best-of-three, it’ doesn’t matter. Of course, it’s always good to win against FaZe, against such a good team, I mean they’re the best team in the world, but the main thing is to win the tournament. So of course we’re happy, but we need to look forward.

You say it’s just another best-of-three, but they’ve knocked you out of your last three Big Event playoff appearances, so it has to feel a little special finally getting some revenge here right?

Yeah, I mean we had some advantages against them. First of all, they just won the Major, and after winning a Major you’re getting tired maybe, and usually you’re losing the next tournament. As we can see, FaZe played really well, but they actually could do better I’m pretty sure. We’re going to prepare for that next time, for sure.

We have to talk about Ax1Le, he had a pretty incredible series. Just.. what was that?

I’m always saying that these four guys, they’re young, talented, and every one of them, awesome. Ax1Le is one of the best riflers in the world, I’m going to say he has clean aim, the best. He’s improving a lot, and… he’s just a monster [laughs].

The last two best-of-threes you played against FaZe, you picked Mirage and Dust2. This time around you went for Overpass and ended up losing it, just tell me a bit about the veto and how the series actually went down.

I think the veto was pretty good, better than last time. Overpass we should win. We could win if I didn’t do some mistakes, I don’t know, I just didn’t play my own game, and I did some crucial mistakes.

That’s one of the main reasons why we lost that. We had a good plan, we had a good T side, we got seven rounds as the T side and I think it’s enough, for us it’s enough. We have one of the strongest CT sides on Overpass, but some things just didn’t work and I did some crucial mistakes, as I said.

Coming from the Major, where you lost against Imperial, and then coming here and bouncing back with these kind of results, what was the conversation in the team like between the events to help you bounce back?

Our goal is to be the best team in the world, it doesn’t matter when it’s going to happen. Of course, we would like to be there right now, but all we need to understand is that we’re still a young team, and we need some experience for sure.

Yeah, we lost at the Major, but we have a lot of tournaments in the future, and we’re just trying to fix our mistakes and move on.

You’ve yet to win a Big Event on LAN, you had a few wins in the online era. Now you’re headed into the semis, how’re you feeling heading into the second day of playoffs?

Of course our dream is to get some LANs, to win the big tournaments. This one is one of the biggest tournaments, the best teams are here except for NAVI. Of course our dream is to win, and it’s going to be a big motivation for our spirits for the future if we win.