djay: "I’d love to get PwnAlone to play with us full-time again"
MIGHT rifler Jonathan "djay" Dallal spoke to Dust2.us during the Fragadelphia x Tap 2 group stage, after the team's 2-0 opening victory against Brain Destroyer. MIGHT is still looking to finalize the roster moving forward, but djay wants one of the stand-ins at this event, his former teammate Josh "PwnAlone" Pigue, to make his full-time return to the NA scene.
The full interview can be found below on YouTube, with key snippets from the interview underneath.
2-0 win but a little bit close coming out of the first series. How do you feel?
Pretty good. We’re having a little bit of trouble with our Anubis right now, but when it comes to Nuke we’re feeling good.
PwnAlone had an especially strong showing versus Brain Destroyer. Of course this is someone you’ve played with for a long time, but what’s it like to be back with him again, even for just a one off event?
It’s great! Josh is one of those players who fill roles and gets all the kills he’s supposed to get. He did have a rough start to the day, but on map two he went something like 23-1. Josh is one of the best teammates I’ve ever had. I was trying very hard to get him to come out of “retirement,” but he’s courteous enough to join us for a few events. I wish I could keep him on long-term, I might try and rope him in for a little longer.
He’s filling in for James "JAM" H. right now, but for how long should we expect PwnAlone to keep playing with MIGHT?
So we actually just recently parted ways with JAM; we just haven’t made an announcement yet. I’d like to get PwnAlone to exit retirement and have him play full-time again, but I don’t know how likely that is to be. He is willing to come with us to the next LAN as well, so depending on how we perform here, if we do a little bit better in the future, maybe I’ll be able to rope him back into a full-time gig.
What prompted the decision to part ways with JAM?
JAM is a very busy individual. He works full-time and he’s got very early days, like 4am or 5am days doing personal training. So it was just a mismatch of scheduling. That’s really all it was.
We’ve seen this MIGHT squad go through a lot of roster changes. How do you feel about the core of this team in its current state?
Great, actually. Historically we’ve been through a lot of changes, but the current core right now feels great. It’s like the EG White boys getting back together, there’s a lot of natural chemistry, and an understanding of how we want to play the game. Obviously we were never perfect as a team in the past, so there’s still those minor hurdles we have to get over. But in general I feel really confident with what we’re able to do with the minimum amount of practice we’ve had.
Do you think there’s a risk of treading old ground? Do you think this core can still innovate despite having been together for such a long time?
If we’re able to put in the hours we can absolutely innovate on what we’ve done. We’ve clearly hit a little bit of a block on some maps and I put that on the amount of hours we’ve been able to put in. If PwnAlone is down to go full-time and if we continue to see success, we’re gonna put whatever resources we have in and if we can do something with it then we’re just going to perform our best.
