FLY Bwipo: "NA is greater than EU because NA learned from EU"

FLY Bwipo: "NA is greater than EU because NA learned from EU" | Sheep Esports

"Beating EU wouldn’t feel the same if fans didn’t care about their region. Beating G2 felt a bit off—because fans were downplaying them so much"

A powerful statement from the last representatives of the League of Legends Championship of the Americas (LTA): FlyQuest stunned all of Europe by sweeping G2 Esports at the 2025 Mid-Season Invitational. With Bilibili Gaming now in their sights, the boys in green will need to give it their all to keep their lower bracket run alive. In an exclusive yapping session, Gabriël "Bwipo" Rau took the spotlight and spoke to Sheep Esports about their recent victory, his current form, and what the West must do to evolve.

How do you feel after beating G2 3-0? Did it play out how you expected? Are you happy with the result?

Gabriël "Bwipo" Rau: "I'm pretty satisfied with the results. Inspired (Kacper Słoma), especially, played absolutely out of his mind. In general, he's been smurfing in all our scrims, all our practice. I want to give him praise publicly because I want to let him know that he's definitely the core of our team right now, and he's pulling most of the weight. That's why we're winning. I hope that teams aren't going to spend too many resources on stopping that from happening—but that's definitely going to happen.

The reality is, you're playing a best-of-five every match. They're watching your games, watching our series, and saying, “It's all about Inspired.” Watching the series against G2—it’s all about Inspired. There's going to be a large amount of focus on making sure he can't have the best games. So now it's my responsibility as a top laner—and the rest of the team's as well—to either set him up for success, or, when they're investing a lot of resources into making his game difficult, that we're able to fire back from the lane perspective, be stronger in our individual positions, and then carry him.

How did you evaluate G2’s overall strength? Did they feel as threatening as AL?

Bwipo: I’ll just say it how it is, because why not? You guys back in Europe like it that way, I like it that way too, so no filter here. In terms of firepower when it came to botlane, G2's just wasn’t as good in teamfights. I felt like ours was significantly more impactful in teamfights. And then in jungle especially, the gap was huge. I definitely think the gap was most noticeable in the AD and jungle departments, as well as support. In terms of teamfighting, we were much stronger there, and that made the difference today.

For toplane, BrokenBlade (Sergen Çelik) played a very fine game. I feel like I was able to have some nice picks and moments, but it's not like he was weak. Especially his Aatrox game, it was just a very hard champion to play in a game like that. Not to say he couldn’t have had more impact—but you can always play better. I could have played better too.

Against Li "Flandre" Xuan-Jun, you seemed to struggle more, especially with your Mordekaiser pick. Did it feel good to bounce back with a stronger individual performance today?

Bwipo: 100%. Yorick is a champion that's definitely hard to counter, he's very strong early-game. I just looked at the draft and thought Mordekaiser was a good pick there. We were playing a draft where I have to be very strong in the game, and I have to be driving the game along because our jungle was losing, and our botlane was losing lane. I took that responsibility way too far, played it over-aggressive, and got absolutely owned.

I mean, it’s a bit ridiculous. I walked into Yorick, missed my E, missed my Q, and I died—and it’s like, “Where am I right now? Am I playing solo queue at home? Am I in Master tier? Or am I playing at MSI?” You know what I mean? It’s that kind of question you ask yourself. You gotta play more respectful. Even if I did hit the skills, it would’ve been a pretty close fight, to be honest with you. It wasn’t like a clear victory for me when I went all-in. It was just a really fucking terrible play.

Aside from that, I played all right—I don’t think I played too well, I don’t think I played too poorly. As for today, same thing. I didn't do anything that was spectacular, but I also wasn't a liability in any way. I just made sure that I was in decent positions, showed up to 5v5s, and did my job.

Obviously, moving forward, I’d like to be someone who’s able to give a little bit more to the team than that. So that’s going to be the focus for me—finding healthy ways to gain advantages—because I don’t feel like I was challenged in draft at all in this series. I feel like I was able to play comfortable champions and get into positions where it was just very easy for me to play the game.

Sometimes, too much respect can hurt your play—like Javier "Elyoya" Prades Batalla said happened to him against BLG. How do you find the right balance between playing with confidence and showing respect?

Bwipo: The way I look at it is very simple: just play what you're good at. And when you're in a situation where you're playing the game well, opportunities will present themselves to you—and you gotta take them. That's the hardest part of being a professional player at the highest level: being able to play the meta at a point where you recognize the difference between a winning or losing situation and fully committing, capitalizing, just putting your foot down and saying, “I'm winning this.”

Because you have to take that extra step—you need to execute well no matter what. Eastern players are very good at dodging. Their mechanics are just better. No surprise there. So when you commit to the play, it's not just a free win. It doesn't come down to committing and winning, you still need to execute well too. It's really important that when you're stronger, you really put your foot down.

That’s a big reason why I think Western teams have struggled playing non-scaling drafts into Asian teams. Either they're too afraid to commit to the play, or when they do commit, they get outplayed—and then they fall behind, and the game becomes really hard. So scaling has always been the answer to that, because you get more chances. Play a dragon fight wrong, you’re down 1,000 gold—no problem, your champions scale well.

So yeah, finding those matchups where Asian teams agree to play your style has worked well. There’s a certain champ I always seem to get in best-of-fives against them—I’m happy with it. Probably won’t keep happening, but I hope so. In the end, it’s about how confident you are on a champ and knowing when to fully commit. If you're in a winning position and your team’s on the same page, you go in and win the fight—that’s the balance between respect and confidence. Running into Yorick at level 2? Probably just bad play. Running in as Renekton with a two-item spike? That’s confidence. You’ve got to know the difference.

Inspired recently mentioned that Western teams often struggle when drafting early-game-focused comps against Asian teams. Do you think the West needs to improve its versatility and stop relying so heavily on scaling to compete better internationally?

Bwipo: I definitely think when it was pre-Fearless, it was necessary—because there were certain champions that were so overpowered early game that you just had to remove them from the draft every time, and you couldn’t do much. Now, you can give them a broken-ass early-game comp and lose in peace, and they can't play it again, so it's fine.

It's kind of what AL did too us in one of the games we played—they had a much stronger early-game comp, and then it was up to me to make the difference because I had the winning matchup on the counter pick. We needed to stem the early-game bleeding and then make a play together with me, probably, to get out of that game. I blundered, and suddenly everyone else is collapsing—because their early game is hard, and they were relying on me.

On the bright side, we lost in peace. The champions weren't pickable anymore, and it’s like, whatever, you know? Let’s go next. When it comes to Fearless, it helps a lot—because you don't have to worry about that anymore. Like, they lock in their Jayce-Elise bullshit—whatever. Alright, you get fisted in 25 minutes, you walk off stage, don't worry about it anymore. They can't pick that shit anymore.

There are only so many strong early-game champions on any given patch. You should be able to cook something up in case that happens to you. And I definitely think it’s in our favor in that sense. There are more drafts that will gravitate towards a good old-fashioned, gentleman-like 5v5 on the dragon. That's where you have to take your chances as any professional team. If you don’t pride yourself on individual mechanics in a teamfight, then what the fuck are you playing League of Legends for?

You'll be facing BLG since they lost against T1. What do you think of both teams?

Bwipo: Not to give people too much hope, but I definitely believe that T1 and BLG are the most beatable out of the four Asian teams. Based on my experience, I’d definitely have preferred to play T1. I say that, but Doran (Choi Hyeon-joon) on stage has been making moves, so to be fair, the Krug Lord might take me out. I personally would have preferred to play the Krug Lord over Bin (Chen Ze-Bin), but I’ll take my chances. I’m down for both of them.

I don’t fuck with Kiin (Kim Gi-in), to be honest with you. That guy is a bit cracked. He definitely feels like he’s a step above everyone else. The others are much more manageable—from my experience in scrims. Not to leak too much, but if I don’t run it down level two into Flandre, I was playing fine. And hopefully in the next best-of-five, I’m not going to run it down level two again. Should be reasonable expectations from the FlyQuest toplaner.

We saw you carrying your Emotional Support Shark everywhere. What’s the story behind it? Is it something your girlfriend gave you?

Bwipo: Yes, it is. On our 5th anniversary, she gave me this necklace, which is why I wear it. I carry it around everywhere. It smells like her—I bring her perfume with me wherever I go. Before I play a match, I smell it, and if it smells like her. To give you the full story: back in 2018, I was a very anxious player. I was a rookie playing Worlds and always super worried. Just giving this a quick whiff brings me back and reminds me that if she believes in me, I’ll be alright. She’s been a really important part of my career, helping me stay confident in myself. So I just bring the shark around because it helps me, you know? I really appreciate her and everything she’s done for me.

With all your experience now, do you see yourself as a more mentally stable player compared to before?

Bwipo: Definitely. Well, it’s not something I rely on, but I’m able to stand my own ground. I’ve worked very hard on myself to be confident in what I’ve accomplished. But there’s nothing wrong with feeling nervous at an international event—let’s be real, it’s do or die in these games. You’re playing against some really good players, and when you make a mistake, you want to have a backbone. That’s what this is for me.

When I feel like I fucked up, I try not to let that spiral. I put a halt to it, refocus, and play the next game, do my best. Especially in Fearless, because there are no salty runbacks—you’re always playing a new game, a new champion. Just knowing you have a fresh start every game helps me stay level-headed. You’ve got to have a strong mindset.

We often hear about the way Asian teams in scrims tend to play differently than on stage. Fearless also impacted the way teams prepare a lot. Can you tell me about your experience thus far at MSI?

Bwipo: I always joke about our two-scrim block days. You play once, get fucked by an Asian team, and then the second block is stress relief, except you get fucked again. It's like, "Oh nice, what a great stress relief guys". When you go international, you get fucked in scrims. It’s just how it is. It’s not if, but when. Someone’s going to absolutely destroy you, win every draft, every matchup. Then you scrim them again a few days later, flip the matchups, they fuck you again.

Thanks to Fearless and the changes in the format, it’s a lot easier to cheese them—pick something they’re not expecting. Especially because when they’re playing certain matchups, people just shake hands. Like, they blind Jax, you pick K’Sante. But if your pick is different, you can throw them off quickly—because they’re used to only practicing that matchup.

Back in the old meta, you could get three to five Jax games a day in scrims if teams kept giving it to you. Now, you might only get one—and if you mess that one up because you don’t know the matchup, ka-ching, I gotcha. That’s the big difference. You’re just not as sharp on those meta champs anymore. Solo queue helps, sure, but the game used to revolve around a few champions you’d spam constantly. Now, your pool has to be bigger, so you’re spreading your time across more picks—both in solo queue and scrims.

You've got about three days of rest now before youre next match...

Bwipo: Well, not rest—I’m practicing. Actually, honestly, I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been grinding Arena like crazy. Arena goes hard. I’m gonna be honest with you guys—maybe that’s the diff. Maybe too much solo queue for G2, not enough Arena. I definitely think I could use some more solo queue though, to be honest. In hindsight, I probably wouldn’t have run into Yorick and died level 2 if I’d played that matchup in solo queue.

Well it’s NA solo queue. Even Alex "Myrwn" Pastor Villarejo was complaining about it.

Bwipo: It's whatever, I’m rank one on my main account—so I take it seriously and I practice hard. I'm not going to let solo queue excuses stop me from playing at a high level. I'll be honest with you, the schedule is pretty rough. It’s Spring Split, MSI, EWC, Summer Split. I worked really hard in Spring, and I’ve been noticing... I don’t want to use the word “burnout” because it’s too extreme, but I’ve definitely been feeling like I don’t have the same gas I had after losing in Winter. Trying my best. Bear with me, team. I’m gonna try my best to perform well here at MSI and make the boys at home proud. I hope you can still support me back in Europe.

Is there anything you’d like to say to the fans out there?

Bwipo: Thank you very much for supporting us all. At the end of the day, I definitely still consider myself European—I mean, I’m an import. So if MKOI doesn’t make it, you can still cheer for us. We’re going to do our best. NA is greater than EU because NA learned from EU—that’s the reality of it. I’d say everyone who worked really hard on our team to set the culture has been European. It’s really Mithy (Alfonso Aguirre Rodríguez), Nukeduck (Erlend Våtevik Holm), Inspired, and a little bit of me. I don’t think I did that much in top lane, I just focus on myself and hopefully don’t die level 2.

Keep that in mind, guys—we’re successful because we brought some of the best from Europe to America and we work really hard to make that work. Hopefully MKOI can still make you proud. Be happy with what you’ve got, you know? You guys have some of the craziest, most passionate fans—and I really appreciate you for that. That’s what I love. I love you guys for that. Keep it up, keep cheering for your teams, because that’s what makes it fun.

Beating Europe wouldn’t feel the same if you guys didn’t care about your region. That’s why beating G2 right now felt a bit off—because people were downplaying them so much. I’d be very excited to play against MKOI on stage as well. The Maula is waiting for me. I’d be very happy to have a Maula-off and see who’s more Maula. I think I might just take him out on that though."

Header Photo Credit: Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games

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