M80 project was almost signed by Team oNe

This week, Guatemalan star rifler Mario "malbsMd" Samayoa took part in an interview with BLIX where he spoke about his transition to an English-speaking team, talks with Team oNe, and the upcoming plans of the team.

Within the interview, he spoke about how after the 2023 BLAST.tv Paris Major Americas RMR the team split apart with Matheus "pesadelo" Panisset, Victor "iDk" Torraca and Pedro "Maluk3" Campos all departing as they headed back to Brazil where they joined an organization called Age. For a long time, malbsMd was the lone representative of oNe as the organization prepared for their re-entry into Counter-Strike.

In the interview, the Guatemalan revealed that he was already in talks with other teams, even with a "tier one team" since March 2023, but that the move ultimately fell through. While eventually, M80 came through as an opportunity, there was a time where oNe was looking to acquire the former ATK core.

We were talking with Team oNe to build a project in the organization that would be reck, swisher, me, MisteM and WolfY.

Ultimately, as malbsMd described, the talks with oNe fell through and M80's Donald "SyykoNT" Muir approached the rifler and had several meetings with him. In the end, four of the original project members stayed while Gareth "MisteM" Ries would not make the final squad with the organization choose to pursue Marcus "maNkz" Kjeldsen instead.

Now, the team is planning to stay in Europe unless there are qualifiers in North America. As malbsMd described, "It's impossible to practice in NA, there aren't any good teams and there's no way to evolve by staying in NA." It's another tough assessment of a region that is desperate for higher-quality teams and players to elevate the skill level of competition.

In regards to speaking English, malbsMd says that he feels "more comfortable" and in his Brazilian teams, "it was hard for me to communicate in Portuguese". Hopefully, the rifler will be able to perform even better while guiding this new North American project to greater heights.