nitr0: "I see a lot of people doubting us and that fuels me even more"

NRG head into the BLAST.tv Austin Major after an underwhelming showing at IEM Dallas 2025 that saw one of NA's top teams dominated in one-sided losses to Vitality and Aurora. After this poor showing, Nick "nitr0" Cannella told Dust2.us' Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore that his team has been hard at work to be in top form in Austin.

In the media day interview, the two also discussed Jadan "HexT" Postma's career-worst showing at IEM Dallas, starting in Stage One, and the team's opening match versus TYLOO.

The full interview can be found below on YouTube, with key snippets underneath. All questions and answers below have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

You're heading into the Major off of a poor showing at IEM Dallas. Was there a sense of disappointment coming out of Dallas, do you think the team played to its level in Dallas?

It was definitely disappointing. We would have liked to do a lot better obviously and we kind of got stomped. The thing is we knew the Major was coming the next week or two so up until Dallas we didn't have the best practice coming into it.

So, it was kind of good to really learn where our weaknesses lie after facing such good teams in Dallas. It was a bit unfortunate that the whole scheduling thing happened with Aurora facing HEROIC the same day after arriving. Who knows if they would've won if they were here earlier or not, I think they should've won the match.

That's how it happened, we played two really tough teams and we weren't supposed to beat them but we also didn't make it as competitive as we would've liked.

All in all we learned from the tournament about our team and ourselves. We're going to try and apply everything that messed up in Dallas to this tournament and do our best.

What were your main takeaways from Dallas in terms of what the team needed to improve and were you able to address them at the bootcamp?

It was a lot of different protocols and a lot of communication issues we had specifically in Dallas that we've been focusing on this week. More niche stuff in the team aspect of the game so those were our main takeaways from it and we reviewed the games and fixed some tactics here and there.

In Dallas we saw HexT really struggle, posting a career-worst performance. As the team's captain do you have insight on his struggles in Dallas?

I can't really speak for him individually but I know he's been saying he's been in a bit of a slump, but this week he's improved a lot even from the practices that we're playing before Dallas.

It's all mental for him. Throughout my career I've been through what he's going through right now and you're just looking for ways to figure out what's going wrong and then you start in your head [thinking] it's your mouse or that you have to change your settings. But, at the end of the day you always find yourself going back to your OG settings and you find your form again.

It's all mental for HexT and I know how good he is, and he shows all the time in practice. I'm sure he'll be fine in this tournament, he's been playing well.

Has the practice been productive this week with the international teams in Austin? How much of a step up is it from the "worst-ever" practice in NA you were telling BLAST about in a recent interview?

Oh yeah, it's been way better. The amount of practice we got this week against top ten teams was like three months of playing in NA. You really get tested and losing a scrim in general you can learn so much from it.

We lost some scrims, won some scrims, had good results in scrims, and been dominated in scrims, and then watching them back tells us what we can do better. When you win every scrim in NA... ok not every scrim I sound cocky, but when you win most of them you don't really get tested. It gets to the point where I can do anything and it will probably work against these guys.

These scrims are almost like replicating a match environment where the CTs are forcing you to adapt to how they're playing and that's practice you need as an IGL instead of just looking at a piece of paper and being able to call this or practice this exec.

It's more critical thinking from every player on the team and sometimes you don't really experience that in NA because people just run it down sometimes and you're like, 'I got an Ace, that's cool,' but you don't learn from it. That's pretty much the tl;dr.

With this squad heading into Stage One is it a benefit to NRG to be able to ramp up against a lower caliber of opposition rather than facing top teams off the bat?

Yeah it's definitely way different. I've been waiting for a tournament with weaker opposition so we can actually not face Falcons in the first game or an Aurora or Eternal Fire in game two.

I want to be able to get into the tournament and actually show what we've got. It's really hard when you don't live in Europe and get as much practice there as you want to be as good as you want so it's really good for us to feel out the tournament and start against weaker opposition.

Right now we're taking the Major stage by stage and we said each stage is its own tournament itself. You beat Stage One, then go into Stage Two, and so on. We're taking it stage by stage, match by match, and trying to show that we definitely have it because I see a lot of people doubting us and that fuels me even more. It's nice to see that people... ok it's not to see people saying that but it fuels us as a team to do better and show that we can do it.

How are you feeling about the match against TYLOO tomorrow? Have you had a chance to study them at all?

They have a lot of skill and I haven't fully studied them yet but I don't think it's going to be more of a hard macro team where they're 'faking here, having lurkers coming out on this side,' it's going to be "brawly". As long as we're on our A-game and hitting out shots we have a good shot of beating them.

We've had some practice versus Lynn Vision so we can feel out their style because they're similar teams in their approach to things. Overall we're feeling confident although I know they've been on a heater recently so it's going to be a fun game.

nitr0 and NRG will head into their first game of the BLAST.tv Austin Major against TYLOO tomorrow at 05:30PM.