JACKZ and NiKo Praise m0NESY for Stunning Arena Debut: "He is born to play CS"

G2 Esports put on a terrific performance yesterday against Virtus.pro (VP) in the quarterfinals of the IEM Katowice 2022. While the European lineup was able to finesse their opponents in the second map - Ancient, which was supposed to be VP’s stronghold, the real tussle actually took place on the opening map Mirage.

Despite Mirage being G2’s map pick, they were not as dominant as one would have expected them to be. While the senior riflers Nikola “NiKo” Kovač and Audric “JACKZ” Jug struggled to find their rhythm, Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov, who was making his arena debut for the side, clinched the map for G2 in the third overtime with 45 frags to his name.

Following their victory, both JACKZ and NiKo in a post-match interview praised the 16-year-old star AWPer, with the former referring to m0NESY as an “insane” player and stating that he was born to play Counter-Strike.

G2 m0NESY tears VP apart on Mirage, Takes 53 frags for the side in his arena debut

After a tense lower bracket run through the group stage of the IEM Katowice 2022, G2 Esports has stormed into the semifinals of the tournament following its clean ‘2-0’ victory against VP. They now stand face to face against NAVI and will be looking to redeem themselves for the PGL Major Stockholm 2021 grand final loss.

While G2 cruised through the second map Ancient which was VP’s map pick, the team faced a hard time closing their own map Mirage that came to an end after 47 rounds. Despite the main riflers, JACKZ and NiKo facing a hard time finding their momentum, the youngest member of the team, m0NESY, shouldered the responsibility of flawlessly carrying his team through this rough patch.

The talented AWPer took 45 frags in total on Mirage, 21 of these came while attacking, and the remaining 24 were secured during the defense. This resulted in the youngster achieving an overall HLTV rating of 1.39 with an ADR (Average Damage per Round) of 98.4 and a K/D of +11.

Recognizing this extraordinary effort by m0NESY in his arena debut for G2, playing in front of a live audience at the Spodek Arena, JACKZ and NiKo had nothing but praise for him during the post-match interviews.

“This kid (m0NESY) is insane, I can't imagine what he will be able to do in the future," said JACKZ, further stating that "He is really, really good, he is born to play CS, and I'm happy that he produced a performance like that in the arena because he was better here than during the group stage."

Previously, Andrii "B1ad3" Horodenskyi - NAVI CS:GO Head Coach, had said that m0NESY has a tendency to get really nervous in important matches. While this was clearly not the case against VP, NiKo addressed it by stating that m0NESY helped out the team immensely through his clutches and that he did not see any nerves from him.

The lethal marksman had shown confidence in his skills when speaking about a potential clash with NAVI before the playoffs. Now that the matchup is actually bound to take place later today, it will be interesting to see how he fares against Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev and his former NAVI Junior teammate - Valerii "b1t" Vakhovskyi.

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