G2 BrokenBlade: “I want someone that I can fight to my limits and find out who’s better.”

G2 Esports capped off a perfect 3-0 start to the 2024 Spring split with a victory over Karmine Corp, marking a solid start in their hopes of earning a fourth-straight LEC title.

After their win against KC, we spoke to their top laner, The Topfather, Sergen “BrokenBlade” Çelik.

Esports.net: What are your immediate thoughts following the win over KC?

BrokenBlade: I think we did pretty well in the early game before the dragon, because they had a lot of pressure. Then we really broke our hands a little bit multiple times, and then suddenly we started growing hands and we did something very nice in mid lane. Twice actually. So that felt very good.

I’m not happy with how the game went, obviously, in the early game. Obviously, it should never happen that we play fights like that mechanically but I’m happy we could turn around. We had Smolder, which is nice. I think without Smolder, the game might be a little bit harder than it was. But the fact that we had champions that have a lot of tools to engage – they are always very punishing champions, especially when teams don’t pick a lot of mobile champions.

So we are kind of chilling, even though we knew the score was 6-0. We looked at the scoreboard, everyone had similar items. We were like: ‘yeah, if you find a good scenario, let’s do it’ and we found that scenario multiple times. So I’m happy we found stuff when things were not looking great, but I’m not happy with the early game.

Lee Jones: When we spoke last split, you said that an overall increase in quality in the LEC would be the best thing to help G2 challenge internationally, and at that time you felt the quality had increased for this year. However, the general sentiment by the end of Winter was that the quality was quite poor.

How do you feel about it now, and do you think the required effect of boosting G2’s practice has happened?

BrokenBlade: I definitely think we are always pushing everyone to play their best versus us, because we are the team to beat – both in scrims and also on stage, as of right now at least. So we definitely think we are making teams stronger. I do think they did get stronger. Throughout the year, you would hope that the team gets better.

Obviously every team gets better, but I think that KCorp is obviously coming in with a lot of motivation to prove everyone wrong. I think Fnatic is looking stronger, even though they lost today. When it comes to raw skill, I think the teams did get better. You can see a lot of teams have their own ways of doing stuff, like Vitality is, for example, playing Smolder top lane.

But yeah, I’m still excited. I think towards the end of the Spring split is usually where teams start to either peak or crumble. That’s why I think in the middle of the year, I feel like it’s a nice time to really crash or be on the hype train. And it’s still quite early for that.

Lee Jones: You’ve generally been considered the league’s best top laner for a while, but last split many thought Irrelevant or Adam were performing best.

How do you feel you rank amongst your peers at the moment?

BrokenBlade: For me, I think it’s definitely nice to see people like Irrelevant stepping up as a top laner because it gives me a challenge and motivation to stay on top. I do think he has been playing very good and props to him for whatever he’s been doing – it’s working. He obviously looks really good because he does well and if his team doesn’t do well, he will look even better. And he’s consistently doing well, and that is something you have to show respect to. Also playing against Irrelevant, I could see he has some new tech, some new strategies.

But when it comes to any other top laner, I feel like — at least right now — there is no one who can really match. Not to sound cocky – I think irrelevant is strong and I think that if I don’t work hard, he can overtake me. It will be up to me to showcase to everyone that I’m still there. And for Irrelevant, I hope we can motivate each other to become even greater top laners in the league and motivate everyone else.

I think this rivalry is something that I was looking for my whole life. I want someone that I can fight to my limits and find out who’s better. I think that’s something that really motivates me and keeps me going since this year started because people are like: “oh, is Irrelevant actually the best? Am I still the best?”

It fuels me to be even better every day and I’m working really hard to maintain that status. Obviously it’s never given to me. I need to earn it every single day. Every single day I wake up I need to be like:

“Okay, this is what I need to do to become better. What champions do I need to play? What can I do to make my team win?”

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