swag: "We have good offers"

The ownage mix, composed primarily of players with Pro experience, made short work of both GamesRCheap and Heaven's Devils, dropping only six rounds across two maps.

Ahead of the playoffs, we sat down with both Braxton "swag" Pierece and Shawn "witmer" Taylor to discuss the former's recent unban by ESL, his future, and ownage's chances at Fragadelphia 11.

swag, it was just earlier this week that you and other players were unbanned by ESL, what does that mean to you?

swag: This is obviously a more fun event, just to have fun and get back into it, but of course I want to win.

witmer, you qualified for Pro League with Enigma6 (now Rogue), but won’t be playing with them in the upcoming season — how frustrating is that?

witmer: How many times do I have to qualify for this league before I actually get to play in it? (laughs) But it happens, I wasn’t the best teammate last season, I had a lot of stuff going on at home. They made their decision and I wish them the best of luck, I think wrath is going to do real well next season.

You were pretty critical of Enigma6 as an organization, anything further you want to say?

witmer: That was a massive miscommunication between me, the team, and E6. I actually ended up talking to them again and we hashed out a lot of details around the situation, so no bad blood towards them.

swag, it’s known that ESL brought some players together to discuss whether to unban you, were you (the banned players) part of that process?

swag: I wasn’t involved in any discussions, from what I’ve heard they talked to the players, and pretty much all the players agreed we should be unbanned. They didn’t talk to us directly or anything, we just heard from the announcement.

You guys have pretty much confirmed that yourself, Sam "DaZeD" Marine and Keven "AZK" Lariviere are going to make a new team together, how far along is that process?

swag: Us three are confirmed, we’re looking for two other players and have a couple of options. We’re also talking to organizations, we have good offers, so everything is looking good.

You were contracted to Cloud9 for a long time throughout your ban, any thoughts on the organization?

swag: I have nothing but good things to say about Cloud9, they treated me well.

How do you like your chances at the event?

witmer: There’s some pretty good teams here, but we have a good mix. Kaboose is playing real well, swag is super motivated and I like to think I’m a LAN player (laughs). I think we have a good chance of taking it, actually.