Oxy: “I just want to be written down in history one time” – VCT Americas Stage 2 Interview

Cloud9’s star duelist, Francis “OXY” Hoang, has been on a steady rise through North America’s Valorant scene, climbing from ranked lobbies to Dark Ratio, G2, and now C9. After a hard-fought three-map loss to Sentinels in the VCT Americas Stage 2 Playoffs, OXY sat down with Hotspawn to reflect on the match, his path to the pro stage, and his ambitions for the future.

Hotspawn: You’re just coming off of your game against Sentinels. It was a very close game that went to all three maps, and two of those maps you actually played yesterday against Leviatán.

What went different today?

OXY: “I will say on Corrode it was more like the same sort of a very, very rough start and snowballing momentum-wise, like the very beginning of the game. It was just like we’re losing a ton of rounds we shouldn’t even be losing. I guess we’re probably a little different. I guess we’re shaking off the nerves, I guess you would say in our first game. But then we came back, I think we’re down like 0-4, 1-4 already, and then I got a triple kill in mid. Then we started stringing rounds together and we brought it back to 7-5, even though it should [have been] even better for us.

“But I feel like when we start off these games, it’s always like a momentum against us. I thought we started off a little cold and our focus on the next two months were to start off hot and not have these rough strong- like losing the bonus round, losing the pistol round and stuff like that. But that was the story for Corrode.

“And Lotus—we honestly believed we could win a fight, and we were like, we have a molly and everything is perfect. But zekken just wide swung out and killed two of us like twice or three times, I remember. And that just threw our game off. And honestly we should have adapted faster and we should have moved off. But honestly on our attack we were playing very well and we were coming back, but they’re still just playing their game, playing online and we just lost from there. But it was a very good game though. It was a pretty fire game. I had a lot of fun.”

Hotspawn: You’ve been through the grind all the way from Tier 2 with Dark Ratio to G2 and now C9.

How has that journey been?

OXY: “To be honest, it’s been very, very—it’s been a long journey. It was pretty hard. When I first started off, I was just playing ranked and honestly, I didn’t even have a dream or the imagination to become a pro. I was just playing the game and I didn’t think I was that good. But I hit Radiant like: “Oh, let me just keep playing, see where this takes me”. I was just playing for fun.”

Hotspawn: You didn’t even want to be a pro originally? What convinced you?

OXY: “I was just playing ranked for fun. I just come home after school. My mom told me to do homework. I do homework. I finished homework. Then I just go play Valorant. And I was like, it’s a fun game at the time, before that I was really into League. I played League for legit 4 or 5 years before that, and I was like an FPS shooter also at the same time. I was playing Overwatch too.

“And then there was this rumour of Valorant coming out. It was Project A as it was called. And they’re lik: “It’s this tactical shooter, League-style, skill-based, CS:GO type of thing”. Like oh, it’s going to be fun. And then I played it with my friends. I started in Plat 3 as my first rank, just the highest you could place at the time. And then I just kept going up. I got Radiant. And the first time I got a glimpse that I could go pro was probably in ranked when I was playing against pros.

“I was beating them and doing very well. ShahZaM was probably one of the biggest people I played against in ranked that really showed me that I might actually have a chance.”

“My friend was like: “Why don’t you just try this after school one day? Why don’t you just come play a tournament with us?” I was like: “Okay, what do I have to do? Do I have to sign for something?” He’s like: “Oh, you can just come play. Just join the lobby and play”. I was like: “Okay”. I joined, played with them. One of my first matches I did super, super well and I was like: “Damn, okay, I might be able to do this thing”.

“And then from there I had some complications with school. I couldn’t practise at a good time, so I got kicked off one of my first teams. But then my buddy ZexRow, a Fortnite player, brought me on Dark Ratio. We were beating everyone in Tier 2 tournaments after school. Then I got a trial with G2, they picked me up, and now I’m on C9.”

Did you always want to be a duelist?

OXY: “Honestly, at the beginning I just really filled. I was a fill player. I wanted to fill and I played every agent. And then the agents I was doing very well, I was like, damn, I’m trying to get Jett and Raze. When they first came out, I kept playing them. I was getting a lot of kills, so I kept going. And that’s how I kind of started. I just fell into the role of Jett, Raze, and then followed the line of duelists. So like Neon when it came out, Yoru when it came out, stuff like that.”

Hotspawn: Do you have a favorite and least favorite agent?

OXY: “Sova, honestly. Favorite agent other than duelists has got to be Sova. I have so much utility that I can help myself and help my team. Like the dart shocks, I can drone for myself, recon for myself. But also nowadays I’ve been kind of a troll and I always shock my teammates.

“One of my funniest moments, I was playing Sova with s0m. I shocked him on Haven, I killed him. He left my party and said: “Don’t talk to me”. I just started bursting out laughing.

“But my worst agent? Harbor. Oh my, what a terrible agent. I can’t do anything on Harbor. I’m just throwing random walls and stuff

everywhere. It’s like I’m painting. It actually just feels like I’m painting on Harbor and I’m terrible at painting.”

What’s your biggest personal goal as a pro?

OXY: “One, the first thing I want to achieve is making an international tournament. That’s the first step into my big goal. And my big goal is to win the championship. Like I just want to be written down in history one time to be the best duelist in the game, undefeated one time, and then I’ll be fine after that.”

Hotspawn: Who’s the best duelist in history so far?

OXY: “If I had to pick one, it has to be aspas. He’s just been incredible. Every single tournament and almost every single time he’s been incredible. His OPing, his everything, is just incredible.”

Hotspawn: This year you guys have had a gradual uptick.

What’s been the reason for that?

OXY: “I feel like this entire year we’ve been building towards this moment, like playoffs, and finally winning a game in playoffs. We got over that step. Now it’s just being ourselves and being better in these playoff runs.

“I feel like we’ve gotten way better at just being calm and very slow. In past playoffs, it would be very fast-paced, off-tempo, too fast where we couldn’t even think, and it caused us to play way differently. But now we’ve slowed it down.

“We look like we’re actually playing the game. It doesn’t look like we’re just running it down and being very bad.”

Assuming you make Champs, who’s the toughest opponent?

OXY: “I think the toughest team has to be SEN. They always feel like they have the upper hand. Both SEN and G2 were our two losses in groups, but SEN are scarier. They have sparks of individuality — zekken, N4RRATE, bang, all of them. They’ll take their individual plays. G2 are more structured, more natural level playing together. But SEN are intimidating.”

Hotspawn: Who would you like to face next in the lower bracket?

OXY: “Honestly it doesn’t matter to me. I’m more focused on ourselves as a team. It doesn’t matter who we play against. That’s one of the stepping stones I got over — I don’t want to pay attention to the other team. I just want to pay attention to us and what we’re doing and what we need to fix. The only thing to look at is to adapt on what they’re doing.”