Former Akuma player set to coach Rocket at Americas RMR

In a surprise addition to their ranks, Rocket have confirmed that they are set to attend the PGL Major Copenhagen Americas RMR with Ukrainian coach Alexandr "Psycho" Zlobin standing behind them. What's more, the former IKLA coach has been working with Rocket for some time, having first started assisting the squad in mid-April before committing to being their coach at the start of November.

Psycho is most known, somewhat infamously, for his time with Ukrainian lineup Akuma, which had cheating allegations level against them after a shocking third-place finish at the EPIC CIS League Spring 2021 RMR event. In this event, Akuma would best both NAVI and Virtus.pro in one-sided series against the then world #2 and #7 teams.

This would lead to an open letter signed by 15 CIS teams that called on Valve to investigate the team, claiming that Akuma had "received live data from third parties on external devices," allegedly giving them an advantage against their opponents. Six months later, ESIC would also open an investigation into Akuma and Psycho's previous team Project X for potential betting fraud, which included a recommendation that the former Akuma core lineup not be invited to ESIC-partnered events.

This investigation would lead to Akuma owner Alexey Shyshko receiving a lifetime ban in 2023 from ESIC events for matchfixing and facilitating cheating during his time in the scene. It would also later see ESIC ban Dmitriy "SENSEi" Shvorak, Danylo "nat1ve" Bakin, Artur "DarkS1DE" Kravchenko, and Max "THRONE" Semenov for two years due to matchfixing. While Psycho himself was not sanctioned by ESIC, he had previously played under Shyshko in multiple organizations and played/coached all but THRONE during his career.

However, once again reiterating that Psycho himself has never been sanctioned by ESIC or other parties, he does come to Rocket offering his services as a fairly experienced coach and former player that should be able to help Rocket in the most important event to date for the players. As for how these two parties came to work together, Damian "EMIYA" Boulware told Dust2.us that a mutual friend introduced Psycho to Matthew "nero" Seymour last year, and that since Psycho has helped "instill a lot discipline into our practice, which helped us improve a lot between then and now."

With Psycho, Rocket are heading to Monterrey with:

• Christopher "aleph" Froden

• Matthew "nero" Seymour

• Damian "EMIYA" Boulware

• Nelvin "nooz" Gonzalez

• Ahmed "ayy" Mahmoud

• Alexandr "Psycho" Zlobin (Coach)

The PGL Major Copenhagen Americas RMR is set to start on March 1st.