Aurora locked in a playoff appearance at the Esports World Cup after recovering from an opening loss to BIG with wins over M80 and JiJieHao, after which Özgür “woxic” Eker spoke to HLTV about working with Ashley “ash” Battye and Damjan “kyxsan” Stoilkovski, facing backlash from the Turkish community, and the team’s transition to an international roster.
“Sometimes my brain wants to give the Turkish information for that place, and I’m just saying, ‘No, it’s not the right one. I need to say the English one,'” woxic said. “It was kind of hard at the first days, but right now after like one and a half months I think, almost two, I think we just get used to speaking English.”
ash and kyxsan both have a similar mindset like I do
The Turkish sniper also shared that he shares a similar mindset in-game to kyxsan and ash, and that the Macedonian in-game leader has already helped his confidence. “I can tell kyxsan has played with m0NESY and stuff, so he kind of knows that I need to have a kind of freedom to create space for the team and stuff,” woxic said.
“[…] At the start of a round, if I’m silent for like two, three seconds and not saying anything, he just says, ‘Bro, you can do this,’ you know? ‘I see this. He is jumping bad in B on Mirage. Go pick it.’ This kind of thing just helps me as well inside of the round, and also you kind of have a feeling of everyone just kind of believing in your move.”
You can watch or read the interview in full below:
woxic, congratulations on making it to the playoffs here at the Esports World Cup. I just wanted to ask about this last match. It felt pretty convincing from your side.
Yeah, and thank you for your words at the start. I think it was the way we worked, we prepared, this doesn’t matter. We say to each other that we know we are not playing one of the best teams right now, but everyone can beat everyone nowadays, and they also beat Spirit before they came to us. So we just gave our full focus like we are playing against Vitality or like a top five team in the world. I think it just paid off. We played really great Counter-Strike, I think, and we just get used to each other more and more day by day.
Yeah, I spoke to ash about that, and he was quite, not necessarily critical, but just being very realistic about where the team is at the moment with the communication side and all that stuff. For you it’s a return to an international lineup after a while. What has that been like for you?
I forgot the feeling, and after I think five or six years, not sure, of speaking my mother language and coming back again to the English one, sometimes my brain wants to give the Turkish information for that place, and I’m just saying, ‘No, it’s not the right one. I need to say the English one.’
I can see the hate in the comments from our social media; it’s understandable
It was kind of hard at the first days, but right now after like one and a half months I think, almost two, I think we just get used to speaking English. Everyone also, the rest of the Turkish guys as well. So it’s just a kind of harsh switch from Turkish immediately to the English one, but I think we kind of handle it right now and everybody kind of understands each other right now, and I don’t feel like someone has a question in their mind while we’re playing or while we are practicing.
As an AWPer you have a big voice in terms of the plays that you want to make, especially CT sides, right? What has it been like for you to work with kyxsan on the CT sides and having separate voices on the CT side especially?
Yeah, I can tell ash and kyxsan as well have both kind of a similar mindset like I do. I can tell kyxsan has played with m0NESY and stuff, so he kind of knows that I need to have a kind of freedom to create space for the team and stuff. I think that helps me with his mindset, and also I’m offering things, he’s offering things to me as well.
At the start of a round, if I’m silent for like two, three seconds and not saying anything, he just says, ‘Bro, you can do this,’ you know? ‘I see this. He is jumping bad in B on Mirage. Go pick it.’ This kind of thing just helps me as well inside of the round, and also you kind of have a feeling of everyone just kind of believing in your move, you know? And when you have this confidence you’re giving it all, you know?
When you switched over from the Turkish lineup, the local audience had their feelings about it. I wanted to ask you about that, whether it’s been difficult to deal with some of the backlash that came from your Turkish fans.
Yeah. I can understand from their side as well because they have been supporting us, and it has been for five years that they were always seeing us like their brothers, you know? Like real life brothers. So when things just fell apart and just completely became international, they were obviously getting mad and angry about it.
But for me, for a long time, I don’t know, maybe even for one year, I just didn’t read and I turned off my X comments as well. But I can see the hate in the comments from our social media Aurora page, and it’s understandable. It’s so normal. It also happened when we switched from Eternal Fire to Aurora. So it’s just, when time flies, people get used to it, and when they see some achievement they just keep coming to support you. It’s not fully from the heart, doesn’t matter, but we are still here, like me, XANTARES and Wicadia for now, we are here.
And I think they need to keep supporting us because we are still trying to do our best for our names and for our flag, you know? Nothing changed. Yeah, the roster changed, but we are still at the same point where we were two, three years ago.
And it will help once the results start coming in, I assume.
Yeah. I hope so. If you, for example, play a final and win it, you know, everything will be different, I know that. But there are many people who don’t want us to have any success because the things changed in the team and we are not a fully Turkish lineup anymore. But it doesn’t matter. There will always be people who are not going to support you, and there will always also be people who are supporting you no matter what you do or where you go.
I think it’s okay. We can have support, maybe we don’t have support, doesn’t matter. We just want to do our work in a professional way, so it doesn’t matter. But I want to say also one more thing: it’s good to have their support obviously. But anyway, if someone is just feeling a broken heart against us, we still love them. Doesn’t matter.
