Restored into rotator roles, Michael “Swisher” Schmid has been enjoying himself in 2026 with a 1.16 rating on LAN this term.
He’s not the only one on M80 having good time though, with Mason “Lake” Sanderson and Josh “JBa” Barutt joining him above the 1.20 rating mark as the team passed Stage 1 with a 3-1 record.
With new analyst Luca “Munstur” Ioanițiu, formerly of Passion UA, the team are better prepared than ever as they look to prove themselves against tougher opposition in Stage 2.
Things can still go wrong — Swisher called the B8 game “F-tier” — but with two Germans playing on home soil, the team would be forgiven for dreaming of making Stage 3 (or 4) for the first time as an organization in order to benefit from a home crowd.
Listen to the interview here.
Okay, congrats on getting through to stage 2. I mean, that comeback on Inferno was pretty good. What’s your immediate reaction to the game?
T-side didn’t go the way we wanted. Like, the pistol round and the force buy after, it was like flashbacks of the B8 game, right? I felt like we threw both of them again in the same fashion. It’s just like, ‘oh my god, like, snap back into this. Don’t let this happen again.’ But we had a really good CT side. We ecoed them. I think we ecoed them on T-side as well. I had a Tec-9 round, I think. But we came together well.
To be a top player and to be a top team, you can’t be babied
I just wanted to ask about JBA, because, I mean, we’ve all seen the kind of FACEIT stats and everything about how hard he’s been grinding. I think he was grinding in China as well, someone told me. Tell me a bit about how he’s kind of stepping up now, because it’s all three of you Americans are above 1.2 ratings now.
The biggest thing for him has been trying to get him into our system and, like, into the team play system. Sometimes he gets, I think we saw it after player break, or we had like a three-week break after Dracula or something, where it’s like the bad habits come back a little bit from the spam pugs.
So it’s like, we’re trying to get him to be like, ‘like, yeah, like, this is the pug mentality, but, but come on, like, get back into this for a match.’ Like, ‘don’t re-peek this.’ And things like that. But he always pugs. He’s like almost pugging with slaxz- 24-7 every day.
What’s the kind of balance then for a young player like that, between the kind of, the confidence and kind of overcoaching them out of some of that? What’s the kind of, the way you guys see it within the team?
It’s a little difficult because he just has a little bit different view of the game sometimes. And he just didn’t get taught, I feel like, when he was younger with Wildcard too much. That he was more so told what to do, not like why, in a sense.
And we’ve been trying to help get him to be like feeling the game more and getting him into a sense of like, ‘Josh, you have the power to do your own things and make your own calls.’ And we can’t baby you in a sense. To be a top player and to be a top team, you can’t be babied and things like that. So it’s like, we’re trying to get him to be more in the motions, to be more self-independent.
I mentioned as well, you being on 1.2 right now, that’s kind of pretty normal for you this year. What do you think is behind that? New roles maybe?
What’s going on? I mean, a few new roles. I feel like I was always kind of, I’ve always been like the guy to get thrown around a little bit to whatever, like the site that’s struggling and I’ve never been one to complain. I was, I think on Dust2, for example, I went from B anchor to A anchor to now A rotate.
I’ve been kind of been thrown around everywhere to try to figure out our problems on maps. I’m just a super selfless guy. And I think that we’ve decided that me in rotation roles has been a little bit better for us. And we gave it a try this year. And so far so good. It was what I played originally was rotator roles before I joined M80. I think just on top of that, I’ve just been shooting well. I couldn’t tell you why, but I just have.
We haven’t had an analyst for over a year; Munstur has been super helpful
Yeah. I also wanted to give you a chance because I just heard JBa giving another interview and he was kind of praising the new analyst. So I wanted to give you a chance to, is it a new analyst or what’s the kind of story there with the help you’re getting?
We have Munstur, the old PA, Passion UA analyst, joining us for this major. We haven’t had an analyst for over a year, I think, until him. It’s just something that we haven’t had and it’s never been an option for us really. It’s something that we’ve stressed that we feel like we need one at this point.
And we ran into an issue last major with not having an analyst that like the veto didn’t go our way. And we went into a game with no prep on a map and this is right when we need an analyst. So it’s something that we got this time around, and it’s been super helpful.
So this time around, we know that you guys have always been good in stage one, local LANs and stuff like that, but stage two has been a bit tougher. Is that the type of extra step that might be able to help you against some of this tougher opposition?
For sure. It’s going to help us kind of focus on the things that we want to focus on. And not having all of us having to watch like four or five potential maps, and just focus on two or three, and then get the other maps printed and then we could just go over them if they do happen to be in the veto. I feel like the best of ones, right now, favor us. But we’ll see going into stage two.
And of course, with two Germans on the team, the dream’s the arena, but what, what is the kind of attitude within the team? Because, you know, MVP events are tough for everyone, right?
Yeah. We obviously want to get to the arena for them. So it’s just one game at a time. The B8 game yesterday was an F tier for us if I were to give us a grade on it. But today it was like a nice solid B, I would say, the CT side Inferno was really good. Our Ancient, a lot better today. And overall, like we’re just giving it at all.
