Swisher: "We know that we are going to be one of the seven teams that come out of this"

M80's run at the Perfect World Shanghai Major Americas RMR began last night in less than ideal circumstances as one of NA's best teams were faced with a shock 13-7 loss to BOSS on Vertigo, sending the team into the 0-1 pool.

After this shock loss, Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore had the opportunity to sit down for a remote interview with M80's Michael "Swisher" Schmid about the loss to BOSS, whether it has affected M80's confidence at all, the team's European bootcamp ahead of the RMR, and Swisher's adamant belief that M80 will be making the Major, among other topics.

Note that this tournament was recorded ahead of M80's 0-1 match against RED Canids that the team ultimately won.

That was a surprising loss to BOSS to begin your run at the RMR, what do you think went wrong against the heavy underdogs?

Before this match we were pretty adamant that after this last bootcamp we should just do what we have been doing and if we do what we practiced everything will go fine. We went into this match and that's not what happened.

People weren't throwing the same nades they were always throwing in bootcamp, people are in different positions not listening to certain calls, and we had a breakdown in that sense so we need to regroup and actually think and talk about it and get our head in the game.

Why do you think that breakdown happened?

I can't tell you anything in particular, my best guess would probably be nerves. BOSS did play well, there were a couple times we went into a couple of their stacks and we knew how they were playing but we couldn't put "two and two" together.

The veto ended up seeing M80 face off against BOSS on Vertigo. Did you expect Vertigo to be the map played and were you ready for that map?

Yeah, of the two maps we expected that was one of them. We prepped that map and we were happy with the pick.

M80 has less maps played and a lower winrate on Vertigo compared to many of the other maps in the pool. How does the team feel about their current level on the map?

In practice I think it's our best map. In all of our scrims it is our best map. That's something we have spoken about before, that we need to put what we do in practice into how we play in games because in practice we play really really well and we always put up good results, we just need to figure things out and play like our practices.

Before the RMR M80 had a European bootcamp like many teams. What can you tell me about the results of the bootcamp and your priorities there?

Our bootcamp went really well actually, we improved on a lot of things and had really good results against a lot of teams. Our biggest priority was definitely just strengthening our map pool.

It felt like we relied too much on Anubis and Vertigo and maybe Ancient. We relied too much on those maps and we didn't have a lot of focus on the others so definitely strengthening our map pool to come into here strong.

M80 has spent a lot of time in Europe recently thanks to that bootcamp and a number of EU tournaments. Do you see that as highly beneficial ahead of the RMR?

I mean it's going to be an advantage for any team that is able to spend time out here. Unfortunately this time around all of the top teams were in Singapore so we were only scrimming tier two teams and tier three teams so we weren't getting as good of practice as normal.

We haven't actually had a [proper] bootcamp this season because of how terrible the ECL was run and the format this year. So this was technically our first bootcamp over a week.

You criticized the format and schedule of ECL there which has become a common refrain among NA players, can you go into more details on the division especially as you won it in a dominant fashion right before heading to the RMR?

It definitely hindered us overall as a core. We discussed it multiple times about whether it would be worth it for us to drop out [of ECL] due to it not giving us any time to bootcamp and be in Europe because of constant games every week and no flexibility in the schedule.

We had to isolate certain weeks where we could be out of the country to practice. It was coming to feel like it was almost a waste of time and it definitely felt like it hindered us prior to the bootcamp now.

We were definitely hurting in a sense because things that would always work against NA teams would definitely not work against better opponents.

We recently saw M80 play in the ThunderPick World Championships where the team was eliminated after two losses to BESTIA. What went wrong with your run in that online tournament?

BESTIA played well and they shot really hard. We weren't used to their playstyle of having a strat every single round, that's their playstyle and they played their strats really well.

We were looking over their Skyboxes and things like and trying to jot down every single strat they have and be aware of them and they were actually changing up how they played. They would throw the same smokes for a strat and then hit the other bombsite. They played well and they shoot hard.

Lake is a rookie heading into this RMR and overall he's been ice cold since joining M80. What can you tell me about his headspace in this event?

We feel very confident coming into this event. We know that we are going to be one of the seven teams that come out of this. The first loss obviously hurts and we feel like we should beat 99/100 times and this is that 1/100 because we didn't play our own game.

[Regarding Lake], he's young and confident and we've been getting him prepared that you never know who you're going to play. He was looking aMajors.im trying to predict our match if this and that happens, and I told him that no matter what breakdown you do it's going to be wrong. These Bo1s are crazy and as you saw in the first two opening matches both top teams lost.

Of the teams currently in the 0-1 pool, who does M80 feel most prepared to face off against?

Our most likely next match would be RED Canids and we're pretty confident. We know that we had a hiccup on the first map but we're going to be stronger on the second map and we're going to win.

With it being your first time in China, how has your experience in the country been thus far?

It's been awesome. We had a layover in Beijing that was a little stressful having to get through everything in a short time. Honestly it wasn't even that short, it was three hours, but we still barely made our flight.

But after making it here it has been awesome, the fans in the DM servers and Retake servers are so nice and they're freaking out that they're playing with pros. We took a few pictures outside with people waiting outside the hotel and they've been nothing but great.

The city is also beautiful.

So there was already a group of fans waiting outside the player hotel?

There were only a couple that I saw in the brief moment I was outside but there might be more for other teams.

You'll be playing your second match of the day shortly, has the team's confidence been shaken at all by the earlier loss?

We're going to be one of the seven teams that make it through, there's no question about it.

Swisher and M80 would go on to take down RED Canids after this interview and are now set to play their 1-1 match against Legacy tonight at 11:00PM.