PashaBiceps Reveals How the 'Mercedes Incident' Divided VP's Old CS:GO Roster
The Polish CS:GO legend opens up about the Mercedes-Benz curse.
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Former Virtus.Pro (VP) CS:GO player Jarosław "pashaBiceps" Jarząbkowski, in a recent video podcast with Kanał Sportowy opened up about the heavily criticized 'Mercedes Incident' that had resulted in the demise of the old VP lineup.
According to pashaBiceps, the incident had taken place about five years ago in 2017, ahead of the DreamHack Masters Las Vegas 2017. Anton "Sneg" Cherepennikov - Founder of Virtus.pro had announced that if his team was victorious at the tournament then one of the players would receive a Mercedes-Benz E-Class. Virtus.pro went on to lift the trophy by defeating SK Gaming 2-1 in the grand finals of the tournament, and as promised Anton gifted a Mercedes-Benz GLE SUV to Wiktor “TaZ” Wojtas.
This is when things started to get sour within the old Virtus.pro lineup and a divide started to appear between the players. Elaborating on this pashaBiceps explained why it happened and his current relationships with his former teammates.
PashaBiceps explains how one Mercedez-Benz resulted in a collapse of the old Virtus.pro CS:GO roster
While not blaming the organization or pointing fingers at any of the players involved, pashaBiceps explained how the old Virtus.pro CS:GO team had perceived the whole situation of TaZ being gifted a Mercedez-Benz for the team's victory at DreamHack Masters Las Vegas 2017.
As promised, Anton presented TaZ with the famous Mercedez car. At that point in time Filip "NEO" Kubski was the IGL (captain), he was the one calling all the shots and we all had to follow his orders. There is a coach (Jakub "kuben" Gurczyński), they work together in tandem, there are also other players who have impact on a win. But who's calling the shots, arranging the teamplay, and has a vision, for me that person should be the most appreciated.Jarosław "pashaBiceps" Jarząbkowski - Video Podcast with Kanał Sportowy
PashaBiceps claimed that NEO felt hurt and had lost all his motivation to captain the side, Virtus.pro changed their captain and following this change the 2014-2018 CS:GO lineup started to crumble and unfortunately "Mercedez-Benz tore apart the team".
Pasha doesn't receive a pay raise
Furthermore, Pasha also narrated a personal anecdote about a time where he felt that he was unfairly treated.
About 3-4 years ago when pashaBiceps was in his prime on Twitch, with an audience of around 25,000 viewers on average, a lot of sponsors approached the organization (VP) as he attracted a lot of eyeballs.
G2A wanted to sponsor paschaBiceps, so he introduced the representatives to Anton clarifying that they need to sponsor the whole team and not just him.
They came with the money to Virtus.pro and when I was streaming after our training sessions for 5-6 hours, I made money from it but that was also money for the organization. So, Anton wanted to reward me as I was working hard, and because the organization was getting new sponsors because of me. He wanted to give me a raise, however, this was not acceptable by other members of the team, that one member earns more than others and everyone should be on equal terms.Jarosław "pashaBiceps" Jarząbkowski - Video Podcast with Kanał Sportowy
He expressed that at that moment he felt sad, but without any arguments he accepted the decision and moved on. However, even then paschaBiceps felt that he deserved that raise, an opinion that was shared by some of his teammates while others deferred from it.
Note: The video podcast is in Polish and the translation to the specific segment was provided by u/Vagabundu.
Concluding on the topic, pashaBiceps revealed that this was just a small part of the whole story, as he went on to comment on his current relationships with his former teammates.
