IMT Revenge: “Your reddit reputation is looked at as a way to get a job in esports”

After a 0-3 week, the Immortals are now 10-14 on the season. With a lot of time to catch up in the standings, the Immortals will look forward to recapturing their week 1 spark. In this interview, we speak to Immortals' top laner Mohamed "Revenge" Kaddoura to discuss week 2 for Immortals and the power media has on players.

Recently, the team played against Dignitas, talk to me about that game and what happened.

IMT Revenge: It was a really rough game to play top side. Typically if the enemy jungler gets an early lead for bot lane, it is really hard to play the game because your jungler is now behind. Their bot and jungle were able to run away with the game early. It is really good we were able to stabilize despite it all. There were just many moments where we were getting caught out and team fighting was very difficult over time. It really sucks, but generally when these early leads happen, it is just hard to recover.

Seems like you have a good mindset right now after the loss and know how to improve.

IMT Revenge: Yeah for sure, we do not want to get too shaken up. We want to make sure we are at our 100 percent. It is a really long season so we need to take every loss as a learning experience and we cannot let it shake us during the week. We just all have the mentality to move on and take whatever we can from the loss.

In 2021, there is a format change. There are more games in summer and spring games rollover. Is it something you are a fan of?

IMT Revenge: It definitely has its positives and negatives. The positives are that there are more games in the season. This gives a team like us more time to develop and contest the top teams for playoff seeding. I think that the downside is the chance of burnout. It is just constant practice and constant pressure. That can weigh on a team depending on what they do to get through it. That is just kind of the reality and I think that the positives do outweigh the negatives. This is true especially for our team.

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This is fair. I think especially for you guys, Immortals were able to slot in Pretty to the LCS roster as a reward. Did he play in any of the scrims to prepare or was it just the game?

IMT Revenge: He did play scrims with us. Not too many, but we did put him in a decent amount of scrims to prepare him for his game on Friday. We were able to get him adjusted to playing with us and to bond with him. We wanted to learn his style so we could help him succeed on the big stage. Like you said, it was just a reward. He has been performing well in the academy. It is unfortunate that we lost, but it is what it is.

I want to transition towards your values for a bit. You seem like someone very passionate about equal player treatment from your tweets about getting player facts right. How come you are very passionate about things like this?

IMT Revenge: I think that it is just very damaging to people’s careers. It is very easy as somebody who is in charge of broadcasting or somebody who is on broadcast to say something that is wrong. Maybe they do not realize how much weight they hold with their words either. For the average viewer they just watch the broadcast for their understanding of what is going on. They just listen to the broadcast and then those same viewers go on reddit to share that opinion about a player. From time to time, scouting in North America is through reddit sometimes. Your reddit reputation is looked at as a way to get a job in esports. That is why I think that making sure narratives are right and not skewed is very important.

Have you ever thought about joining the players union?

IMT Revenge: I think that players union can address it and work on it. I do not think it is such a a damaging problem yet, but I do see occasional issues of it. It is just good to call it out from time to time. I am the PA head of our team so the PA addresses me for the team. That is my involvement with that. Outside from that, I do not have as much involvement. I do think they are making really big strides now with the new leadership. That has been really great.

Any closing remarks moving forward?

IMT Revenge: Keep cheering for us. We did have a strong week prior to this week, but this week is a bit shakier. We hope to continue performing strong moving forward. Have faith because we are a lot better than what we showed this week. It is sad that we lost, but we will improve.

Revenge and the Immortals will move forward into week 3 with a 10-14 record. The 7th place team is now looking to bounce back in week 3, with hopes to move into the top 6.

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