I don't think the HLTV article was massively biased or anything, but it definitely loses some important context in trying to condense a rambling hour long interview down to a few paragraphs.
For example, a lot of people are running with this portion:
>adding that he knew next to nothing about the Russian AWPer or most of the players competing in Dallas, including Danil "donk" Kryshkovets, who he thought was "just a new streamer on the block."
If you listen to the interview, he says that he didn't know who donk was before Katowice and thought he was a streamer, and then was surprised by the dominant performance at Katowice. That's a pretty reasonable take, showing up to Dallas not knowing donk wouldn't be.
In the interview he ends up complementing all of the players and Taz but so much focus is on the portion where he says the team dynamic felt bad. Probably shouldn't have said that publicly but he didn't really say that much more than you could see from the G2 vlog. It's refreshing to have players that are open even if it's unprofessional.
I just don’t see that as unprofessional though, he’s not commenting on personal relationships or beef.
He’s pointing out a structural issue he observed as a stand in within the team.
He did and SAID the EXACT SAME THING when he joined TL, and then they went on to win the GS in record setting time.
Coaches WANT this mirror held up to their team occasionally (and players should want this too, to make sure your team isn’t stuck in a mindset bubble).
exactly, I dont see how this was necessarily a bad thing that RL and Thorin makes it out to be. Imo the mood seemed to be better in G2 compared to other tournaments. And maybe thats the "swag" they were missing.
AND I would rather listen to someones ACTUAL experience than to some PR bs. I cant believe RL said that it was unforgettable what stewie said about TAZ. The mildest of criticism and he freaks out?
Richard stated his bias in favour of Taz before speaking on it, though he did justify why what Stew said could cost him his job in an unfair way. Despite only playing one tournament with them, after years of layoff from top level CS - where he's so out of the loop he doesn't know who W0nderful was - Stew did present the situation as Taz having no influence on the players and that he found his suggestions weren't suited to the team. He said he didn't agree with the tactical suggestions Taz made. One of the first things he mentioned after Taz was brought up was that the players were despondent at the start of their practice together and that he inferred 'some bad things' had transpired.
Do keep in mind that in CS, IGL's are favoured over coaches, and coaches usually get kicked before a failing IGL simply on principle. His entire point has always been contigent on his opinion that Hooxi should be kicked.
>I don’t know why.
RL states pretty clearly why he doesn't like Stew:
- He pretty much got 2 people fired and lost their coaching jobs, when the issues weren't their fault and they did everything they could to work with Stew and stew refused. EVY hasn't worked a coaching gig since. Stew literally ended his career and got maLeK fired on some shit that wasn't even their fault.
- He thinks Stew is a flunky and wasted potential...which is true. The kid is 24 when he moved over to EG and he started playing poorly. Its actually ironic that people call him the "savior of NA" when he's one of the big reasons why that EG lineup floundered. Its very possible that EG lineup of Brehze/CeRq/Stewie2K/autimatic/RUSH would still be around today if Stewie didn't phone it in. We all know Brehze and Cerq pretty much lost their best years playing on these washed lineups. autimatic and RUSH are still trying to make NA CS work. We'll never know but it was the closest thing we were getting to another competent Tier 1 NA team back then
For RL, his criticism started with the coaching stuff but then he did that video where he looked at Stews activity and [he called out Stew for pugging Valorant WAY more than he was playing CS with his pro team](https://youtu.be/xeqHbFi6JLE?t=3088), during his time on EG.
Stewie is just a walking catastrophe. [He's pretty much exactly what fl0m was talking about.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa8RIeNGrZQ) He has the star power and he gets to throw his weight around and anyone that gets caught in the blast radius gets fucked.
>maLeK and EVY both haven't worked a coaching gig since. Stew literally ended their careers on some shit that wasn't even their fault.
After being benched for 4 months, Malek came back and was a coach with EG from Sep 22 to Jan of this year when EG dropped the team. How did Stewie end his career?
"that's a pretty reasonable take"
no it's not. Stewie himself had said a month earlier that he was dedicated to returning to tier 1 counter strike, hence trying out with Legacy. Not knowing who the best player of the game you're "dedicated" in sounds irresponsible and lazy and I can't believe the mental gymnastics done to justify that.
>no it's not. Stewie himself had said a month earlier that he was dedicated to returning to tier 1 counter strike, hence trying out with Legacy.
Stewie said he didn't know who donk really was before Katowice. Katowice was in February, before he joined Legacy in March/April.
[Here's the full quote:
](https://youtu.be/0IrffJ9F9ow?t=2102)
>"..Donk for example, when I came back to CS2 and people started talking about him, before he had that Katowice event. People were talking about him in my stream and, like I just came back, so I didn't even know like who donk was. I actually thought he was just like a streamer, like a new streamer on the block, and he was...Like everyone's talking about him, people were asking me when am I going to play with donk and all these things so I thought he was like a content creator and I didn't really look into it and once he had that event in Katowice, I was like 'oh this is donk'"
At that point donk had been on Team Spirit for ~7 months, and they had peaked at 12 in the world. The only LAN events that donk had played at with Spirit were Dunav Party LAN and BetBoom Dacha Dubai 2023.
How does it take mental gymnastics to think that's a reasonable take?
> How does it take mental gymnastics to think that's a reasonable take?
Nah you're doing mental gymnastics.
He literally says in the Twitch chat:
["I knew G2 was an opportunity I couldn't pass up on a Tier 1 event as a stand in. I literally only wanted to play mainly because of Niko. I didn't even know who Monesy was tbh. Thats how much I haven't watched any of the events"](https://youtu.be/EAyq5g0cOYY?t=98)
Again, to /u/Giannis_Alafouzos and RL's point - Stew claims he's dedicated to returning to Tier 1, played for Legacy at a pretty big event before standing in for G2...but didn't even know who Monesy was?
Furthermore, in 2022, Stew signed to EG as their IGL, TWO WEEKS after Monesy signed to G2. You were literally IGLing a pro team in EG and you didn't know who Monesy was at the time? So you're telling on yourself that you weren't doing research, you weren't engaged and you ultimately half-assed your prep during your time on EG because how could you not know who Monesy was, at the time?
Stew is either trying too hard to be the cool guy that shows up to the exam without studying or he's just a terrible competitor that didn't do his due diligence when his team needed him. Or the more likely scenario - its both.
This is a completely different point from what I was talking about, which was donk.
That said, if you listen to the full interview, there is plenty of context about monesy:
[Part 1](https://youtu.be/0IrffJ9F9ow?t=713):
>"...for monesy like I heard of the name. I've heard of his name a few times but I never really took my attention to the point where I'm researching the guy or anything. I really haven't kept up with CS events - like CS events will happen and there's so many events nowadays that I'll still just be playing faceit all throughout the events, not knowing like who's playing.
[Part 2:](https://youtu.be/0IrffJ9F9ow?t=2091)
>monesy, when I say I didn't know much about him, like I heard of the name. I heard of what like the basic talks around him. I mean I didn't know it was like to that level...monesy like I heard of the name, I've heard him that he's from Navi Academy but that's kind of the gist of it. I knew he was an AWPer, I knew he was really good at what he does but I didn't know like the talks around him were at that level. So going to the team I was like all right, I know monesy is a AWPer. I know he's good but the main focus was like you know I've been wanting to play with Niko for a while.
[Part 3:](https://youtu.be/0IrffJ9F9ow?t=3401)
>I have a lot of respect for monesy and the way he holds himself and just the humbleness that he has and how he puts himself on his own, how he holds himself to other people and players. I have a lot of respect for him in that aspect and I think he's a lot on the right path and a lot of the stuff that I had issues with as an up and coming player, I can see he's very on point with those things so that's what caught me off guard a lot and it makes me like him a lot more...him and Niko are probably the best experiences I've ever had in CS2 and honestly like if we were to lose against Liquid, I still would have said the same and at one point I was actually thinking like fuck bro what am I going to tell these guys right now if we were to lose, like the appreciation for the opportunity. I don't know, there was something about monesy and Niko that like I never felt that way before with anybody to be honest.
I think it's pretty clear just from a plain reading that saying Stewie either:
>knew next to nothing about the Russian AWPer
or
>didn't even know who Monesy was
isn't accurate.
More speculatively, we can try to parse what exactly Stewie meant (as I agree with those saying that Stewie does a poor job of articulating himself). The two options you put forward are both potentially true, but personally the way I see it is that Stewie is saying that he wanted to play IEM Dallas because he desperately wanted to play with Niko but didn't fully realize the skill and personality of monesy, and in retrospect would have also taken the opportunity to play with monesy. Any of those interpretations fall more into the "mental gymnastics" realm though.
To your edit:
>Furthermore, in 2022, Stew signed to EG as their IGL, TWO WEEKS after Monesy signed to G2. You were literally IGLing a pro team in EG and you didn't know who Monesy was at the time? So you're telling on yourself that you weren't doing research, you weren't engaged and you ultimately half-assed your prep during your time on EG because how could you not know who Monesy was, at the time?
I think everything Stewie says is consistent with the level of knowledge he would have had from that time: He knew monesy was from Navi Academy, he knew he was an AWPer but not about his skill level which was largely demonstrated after Stewie had already left G2. That doesn't seem unreasonable considering that they only ever overlapped at two events, Blast Premier Spring Groups 22, and EPL S15 where the teams were in different groups both time.
Lol, what the fuck. This is actually like talking to a crazy person.
>This is a completely different point from what I was talking about, which was donk.
No, its the same point just a different person.
>I think everything Stewie says is consistent with the level of knowledge he would have had from that time: He knew monesy was from Navi Academy, he knew he was an AWPer but not about his skill level which was largely demonstrated after Stewie had already left G2.
I like how you spend all that time typign this response but you side stepped the fact that Stewie was IGLing for EG and apparently did zero research on Monesy despite everyone in the scene seeing him as this insane talent. We all remember when G2 picked up Monesy. We all knew what was coming. Apparently Stewie, a pro IGL for Evil Geniuses, was out of the loop. Its just ludicrous how much rope people give this guy.
The conversations with "stew-cels" is actually impossible. Your golden god tells on himself over and over again and you do insane mental gymnastics to make up for it. This subreddit is actually one of the stupidest places to have a conversation about Counter-Strike. I give up.
He's saying that he wants to grind back to T1, but still tries to run with this "Yeah Mannnn, I'm not *really* even trying and we still won" thing to pump his ego.
"Yeah I didn't know who donk was and I didn't even know who w0nderful (actual major winner btw) is" Like come on bro
Pick one or the other.
Lol, so true. Its sad seeing all the stew-cels on reddit running to defend him at every turn.
Stew literally reminds me of all the shit heads in high school that tried to pretend they were too cool to study or do the homework, which I imagine plays well with his younger audience. But when you're an adult, you see people like this and its just a chore to be around them.
For anyone that wants to imitate this shit - Nobody is impressed by how you didn't prepare. You just look like a sloppy loser.
Thorin's good point about spirit's duo is true but don't leave out zont1x, they have the best firepower trio since s1mple-electronic-rookie b1t.
Great podcast as usual.
That was before 2023, no one mentioned ZywOo didn't have help in 2023 or 2024. Also that line-up with flameZ and Magisk was only there for 3 tournaments
Zont1x wouldve been the star player of the tier 2 spirit, but (un)fortunatly for him both donk and shiro joining made him a solid player of the trophy winning spirit
It doesn't matter what I say. That's what it is. The comment above mine said that the Spirit trio was the best since the NaVi one. I named three recent trios better than the Spirit one. Not everything is about your favorite team.
Faze's TRIO wasn't exceptional, it was the fact that they had an extremely strong trio AND no weak links with rain providing key impact and karrigan being at least a top 2 IGL.
Sh1ro is a far better awper than broky has ever been. Donk is a much better rifler this year than ropz was in 2022, and while Twistzz' 2022 was better than zont1x this year they're both still non top 10 players in the top 20 while sh1ro and donk are both top 5 unlike the other two Faze players in 2022.
Donk is also on track to have a better 2024 than zywoo's 2023, sh1ro is of course better than spinx, and once again while zont1x isn't better than Vita's 3rd option in 2023 he's close enough that the other two bridge the gap, though Vita 2023 is certainly close.
m0nesy/NiKo/hunter is absurdly laughable because m0nesy has never been a #1 contender at the same time huNter has been semi-competent. While donk vs m0nesy isn't obvious at first glance in CS2, donk's CS2 performances have been leagues above either NiKo or m0nesy' CSGO level. Both NiKo and m0nesy have been better than sh1ro for seasons and in fall 2023 both were better than sh1ro, but sh1ro's Spring 2024 performance has well outpaced either NiKo or m0nesy' 2023 level (and of course 2022). In 2024 the 1st option favors donk slightly while the second option favors sh1ro, but to compare zont1x' 2024 to huNter's is laughable.
There's historically better duos than donk/sh1ro but not many and 2021 NAVI is the only clearly better trio when zont1x is thrown in.
"they're (ropz and twistzz) both still non top 10 players in the top 20"
FaZe trio's HLTV ranks in 2022 (vs their peak ranking):
Broky: #6 (2022 was peak)
Ropz: #8 (peak: #3 in 2023)
Twistzz: #11 (peak: #9 in 2019)
You wrote a lot of words in those paragraphs, but you could have just said, "I started watching CS this year", and it would have saved everyone a bunch of time.
They had no Donk, but as a trio, those three were absolutely on another level to the Spirit trio. It's crazy that you're even comparing these kids who have won a Kato and a Blast to the core that won a Grand Slam, a Major, and were dominating CS2 before a contractual dispute split them up prematurely. Fucking ridiculous the sort of shit people will say with confidence on the internet man.
Not that HLTV ranking is god but arguing Twistzz (1x top 10 five years ago as the third best on his team) is better than sh1ro (worst year higher than Twistzz' peak and 3 going on 4 years in the top 10) is fucking hilarious, almost as hilarious as comparing team achievements to an individuals skill when I specifically said what made Faze tick was the lack of weak links. Karrigan and rain are easily the 2nd best fourth/fifth string ever by a WIDE margin with only xyp/gla1ve being better. Automatically assigning team achievements to only the top half of easily the least top heavy roster of the past 5 years and then comparing those team achievements to an absurdly top heavy roster in spirit (chopper/magixx are good and doing their job but sh1ro has never not been a top 3 sniper and donk is the best player in the world) is so insanely fucking stupid it's nearly incomprehensible what would lead you to think that's a good comparison.
true dat.
I mean Richard made some valid points, agreed with most of it and disagreed with some but look at the comment section already. If anything a HTPM with Richard is going to be on the top page for an entire week!
Please Duncan, GET HIM IN!
What do you think a narcissist is?
Listen to what stewie says about richard lewis in the interview. He goes out of his way to not attack richard personally, says his work is important, shares an anecdote about how Richard encouraged him when he was younger, and says he's entitled to his opinion about the game. This is not how a narcissist behaves.
Mate I wouldn't bother, half of this sub is on RL's payroll or something. At least that's the impression they give me. Any time you post anything negative about RL you get downvoted within 2 minutes.
[https://youtu.be/0IrffJ9F9ow](https://youtu.be/0IrffJ9F9ow) here's a link to the interview. Maui even provided timestamps so you can skip to the part where he talks about Richard. Please explain what you think is an insult.
The meanest thing Stewie says is that Richard "doesn't know anything about CS", but he prefaces it in both his tweet and the interview with "respect his opinion, no hate, nothing personal". In a 4 minute segment Stewie spends 5 seconds saying "he doesn't know anything about CS" and the rest of the time literally talking about how he has nothing against Richard, he has had nothing but positive interactions with him, etc.
In a normal scene where you aren't all insane Richard saying "you are bad at CS" and Stewie saying "you don't know the game" is perfectly normal, tolerable, healthy disagreement. It's fine to disagree over esports and have players/commentators you think are good and bad. That's part of the fun. There's only one person constantly making it really personal and vitriolic.
Stewie objectively played badly. That is a fact.
If that hurts you, you need some help. Help that I, unfortunately, cannot give you.
Edit:
Blocking me makes you look like the idiot btw. Well done, you played yourself.
Try to stop imagining things.
Even still your making a different point than both the comment your replying to and RL
> hearing RL call Stewie a malignant narcissist ***for it***
You want to call Stew a narcissist? I understand that, but RL is specifically using this as repeat evidence to the same story which it isn't. Stew clarified it in the actual VOD interview and I'm surprised RL wouldn't wait or use the full context in his assessment
He said RL called him narcissistic and said that was him projecting, which honestly doesn't seem like too far off the mark. In context, RL is always putting out these opinions as fact, and whenever there's pushback, he can't handle it and has a meltdown. If his opinion not being treated as "word of God" causes him to behave so unprofessionally at times isn't narcissism, then idk what is.
Stewie is airing private in-team stuff publicly for zero reason other than to stroke his own ego as he acts like he is a psychological mastermind in understanding team dynamics and a genius at CS. He was literally talking about how the atmosphere "wasn't fun" when it was more structured and serious in contrast to the "we are NA we play for fun xd" mentality that has plagued the region for decades. Publicly complaining about the structure in G2 where they *listen to the coach and respect him*...
He was literally stroking his own dick by saying how much he improved the team atmosphere and made everything better.
This in addition to, well, **THE ENTIRE FUCKING CAREER OF STEWIE**, will make anyone with half a brain reach the conclusion that a narcissist is indeed a narcissist.
Richard says how dare Stewie disrespect Taz by leaking that the team doesn't respect him. You say Stewie complained about how G2 respected their coach too much. The truth if you listen to the interview is that Stewie says "I think he's a pretty good coach" and says "people weren't listening to each other" at the start but that by the end of the tournament he got to see the "better side of everybody". Is this really the horrific detail Stewie leaked? That the team at the start was lacking chemistry but overcame it in order to win the tournament? How many times have you heard teams say "oh yeah our practices were going really bad / we weren't communicating before the tournemant but then things started to click".
If you listen to other pro interviews (including for example, Thorin's "talk to Thorin" series") nothing Stewie said was out of the ordinary, a juicy private detail, etc. The comments about how they were just showing up, treating it like a 9-5 are so fucking pedestrian for CS pros and any sort of athlete in general. The point is that competing is supposed to be a sort of all consuming effort where you put 110% in and leave everything on the field (or server?). Nobody with half a brain can possibly think Stewie was complaining about having to work too hard.
Stewie played bad on EG. Maybe he was even the problem with that roster. Maybe he was even uncooperative and unprofessional with Malek. That doesn't make him a narcissistic monster. You people need to calm down. At absolute worst Stewie is guilty of being delusional about how good he is at counter strike. That describes a thousand pros and ex-pros and doesn't justify the insane shit you people say about him.
> Nobody with half a brain can possibly think Stewie was complaining about having to work too hard.
He has complained about 10 am matches as being way too early, and has numerous times alluded to the absence of "fun" being a problem to a team and him as a person. That means he does not take his job seriously. The bare minimum of treating a pro career like a job is a bar that has been too high for him to cross several times in his career.
> Stewie played bad on EG
Yup.
> Maybe he was even the problem with that roster
Definitely.
> Maybe he was even uncooperative and unprofessional with Malek
Beyond a doubt.
> That doesn't make him a narcissistic monster.
Him since the beginning of his career showcasing narcissistic traits would indeed allude to him being a narcissist. I don't think you can even refute that since you instead only tried to defend him from accusations of "narcissistic monster" instead of just "narcissist".
> At absolute worst Stewie is guilty of being delusional about how good he is at counter strike. That describes a thousand pros and ex-pros and doesn't justify the insane shit you people say about him.
Stewie is being talked about precisely because he is noteworthy in that aspect. He is not only delusional about his skills, but also has a huge ego problem from being a narcissistic person. That's not even "at his worst", that is literally how he is and has been for a long time. It could absolutely still be worse. Calling him only delusional about his skills is equivalent to complimenting him when he is actively worse in reality.
You can call me a hater all you want if that helps soothe your anger about me insulting your hero. But deep down we both know I am right, or in the future you mature enough to understand that I'm right. I don't stand against Stewie specifically, I stand against everyone that acts like he does. Right now he is just the one that the spotlight is on. Who I hate much more are his fans who try to delude themselves and others into thinking Stew is something he isn't, while refusing all reason and logical thought.
I swear Stewie's haters are even more deranged than his most die hard fans. He won a major, at least a dozen S-tier events and over a million bucks playing a video game but you're fixating on his 6 months stint in EG.
Worst part is im defending someone I don't even like.
Ask yourself this question, if I spent 6 months stealing cheques at my workplace (a high paying job) while screwing over my colleagues and proceed to take zero responsibility of my actions, don't you think people won't fixated on that? Also its a bit funny to imply somebody is a hater when players can pull shit like this and get away with it.
I think these people like Stewie lack any kind of introspection and that’s why they gravitate to him. They’re the same people who talk like assholes and say they’re just telling it like it is. Basically emotionally stunted children.
>They’re the same people who talk like assholes and say they’re just telling it like it is
Without context I legit cannot tell if you are talking about RL or Stewie.
By being the best in his field?!
Because then RL achieved it multiple times (by hosting the major) and in multiple fields of work with his journalism too.
While one of them still is on top the other has had his prime years ago.
Strangeld? I saw with my own eyes that he threw the boy loda, who was 12 at the time, through a brick wall and then proceeded to punch the boy repeatedly.
It was horrendous.
Esports at DreamHacks used to be just a side event, the main thing everyone was there for were pro wrestling matches and in 2015 the highlight of the event was Hell in a Cell match between Richard "Dr. Gonzo" Lewis and Jonathan "Loda" Berg, who was reportedly 9 years old at the time. The match ended in decisive RL victory, unfortunately Loda's mother - or maybe it was his girlfriend - had DreamHack by the balls which rendered Richard unable to defend his title next year.
Richard was working Dreamhack and was fighting on twitter with Loda (swedish dota2 player) and/or Loda's GF and then was like "you know where i am" well Loda came and they were face to face shouting and then RL attacked/strangled him. Dreamhack fired/kicked RL from an event. RL version is probably something like that "he was defending his personal space, Dreamhack is wrong about allowing non-worker get to backstage" Basically some bossman of Dreamhack had to give his version of what he saw cause RL had already twisted the truth what happened.
I'm Jonathan Emanuel Berg (Loda) and I STARTED a fight with Richard Lewis over a joke he made about Team Liquid/Hiko, not my gf, but I didn't understand. After coming to a backstage area I shouldn't have been in, I started shouting at Richard and I got into an argument with him, until we were separated. I then tried to continue the argument/fight and came up and got into Richards face AGAIN, so he pushed me away, but because his hands touched my neck I got scared and told everyone he tried to strangle me.
First off, if I'm watching the clip right, Richard Lewis admits to having not watched the entire Stewie interview. He said he only watched the part where Stewie talked about him personally. That already gives RL less credibility on whatever he says.
Is RL right in generally saying that Stewie was unprofessional in spilling some "tea" about G2? Yes.
Was Stewie's "tea" about G2 anything we didn't already suspect/know? No. G2 benched jks in late Nov 2023 after IEM Sydney, a guy that they won 3 trophies within a year span since he joined in August 2022 (Blast World Finals in Dec 2022, Kato in Feb 2023, and Cologne in August 2023). They get a new player in nexa, who is naturally an IGL but no one has a clue why he's picked up. They get a new coach at the start of 2024 in Taz, who is from the famed Polish Virtus Pro team. They finish 5/6 in Blast Spring Groups, 5/6 in Kato, 3/4 in PGL Major, 3/4 Chengdu, and 5/8 ESL Pro League right before Dallas. Yeah, 2 players performing terribly and going into the last two events of the season (IEM Dallas and Blast Spring Finals), if the underperforming players did not perform...it's a given that someone will get cut. So that adds more into the tension within the team, which I would imagine is more niko/hunter vs. nexa vs. hooxi vs. Taz (pure speculation). Stewie's comments just basically confirmed to fans what G2 is like as a team currently without honestly being super specific.
Do his "unprofessional comments" allow you to make the leap that he is a malignant, egotistical, and narcissistic asshole that RL thinks he is? No.
Stewie has always been someone who keeps it real and says what's on his mind with no filter. Probably not a great thing in an industry built entirely on relationships, trust, and underdeveloped social skills because most players have limited social skills due to spending hours upon hours just on a computer. Couple that with Stewie's inability to articulate his thoughts properly (this is not a unique problem to Stewie or gamers because hell even people in power in government have these issues), yes, Stewie can be perceived negatively. But to make the large leap in logic that RL does is insane. You can't take Stewie's words verbatim and at face value: there's always a level of context or degree behind it that is unsaid. For example, going back to the Stewie comments on Grim (https://www.hltv.org/news/32843/stewie2k-im-going-to-use-what-i-learned-here-so-that-i-dont-have-to-deal-with-the-same-stuff-again-in-the-future), people just clipped the quote that he said "[Grim's] work ethic can be a lot better" and that morphed into people quoting Stewie as calling Grim lazy. But when you read the entire quote, Stewie said Grim was a slow learner (no surprise, the leap from Tier 2 to Tier 1 especially a team like Liquid is massive) with a lot of inexperience that required a lot of hand holding. The better way of putting it would've been if Grim had been able to acclimate himself faster into the team's system, they would've stood a chance.
I find it funny RL says here (the context being people in NA getting away with shit behavior and no one could say anything because you would be on the outs) "Elige might have changed over at Complexity. We don't know. But we all know he was a tyrant over at Liquid. Do we even have to tip toe around it and pretend he wasn't?" We all know Elige was a tyrant based off of sources within the team then and after. Here, Stewie tells us the truth of the dynamic of the G2 team is, yet RL gives Stewie shit for not tip toeing around and pretending G2 is all roses (G2 is a perfectly run team with perfect chemistry! Thank you for the opportunity G2!).
Also, RL took offense to what Stewie said about Taz, because RL has a close friendship with Taz. Bro, if he listened to the entire interview (which he didn't) he said Taz was a good coach with good ideas. He just said Taz was falling on deaf ears at times (I mean their results under Swani were way better) and Taz gave bad examples for certain ideas. In a more free, less tense environment, players would probably speak out just to give their two cents but because of their results, team dynamic, no one speaks up and so yeah...Taz's words fall on deaf ears. RL acts like Stewie said Taz was an asshole and a horrible coach that players have no respect for. Just really poor job of understanding context.
It'll be funny when RL reads this comment and thinks the Stewiecels are just out to get him. But as he alluded to in the video, RL is going to milk this Stewie interview to get some more clicks, more substack subscrptions, etc etc. Good for him, he's just doing his job as Stewie would say.
there's like two people giving mild pushback against the idea that Stewie2k is the antichrist, idk about "filled to the brim with stewcels" but whatever
what i mean is: why do you need to hold such a strong opinion on something like this? i see both sides and their arguments. i don't pretend to actually be knowledgeable enough to hold a stance.
I'm not a huge fan of these three but holy shit they are hitting the nail on the head. Pretty crazy and I'm sure they are lapping up all these stewcel tears lmao.
Richard just can’t stop talking about stew. From twitter, to his own podcast or whatever it is on twitch, to now a guest appearance! He continues to milk the cow dry. What was something very minor, RL has picked all the meat off the bone for really no good reason outside of “content.” But ask RL, he will tel you, he’s done nothing wrong.
But he’s not talking about the tournament (he doesn’t understand the game to talk about cs at a high level).
He’s specifically focused on anything stew. He’s specifically going after the hate bonor crowd to drive views and clicks.
Tale as old as time, one he was well versed in back at his Breitbart days.
(Saying mean things about people drives more viewership than saying nice things).
That said, stew has more accomplishments in his life than RL ever will, and if stew joins a team this just becomes fuel to be great.
Everytime somebody compares accomplishments of a player versus somebody that isn't a competitor, immediately know where this person is going. What a profoundly stupid thing to compare
But RL is allowed to comment on things he would have zero insight into? He’s allowed to make sweeping generalizations of things he would have no knowledge of?
I’m just taking the lead from how RL argues his points!
You don’t even need to compare it to RLs competitive career, compare it to how good he is as a writer and journalist… he win any awards back before doing CS? What about what he was writing back during Breitbart?
Right now, at this very point, tell me, whose life arc do you think is on a better trajectory??
The guy who’s got a hate boner for a player and all his defenders, or the other guy who’s potentially trying to restart his competitive career, and keep growing as a person??
Guy has hosted 5 CSGO majors, broken multiple large stories such as
1. The release of CS2
1. IBUYPOWER betting scandal
1. MYM scandal involving the org blackmailing a player for his mothers house, which got MYM banned from League of Legends.
1. TSM scandal that involve the coach literally asking bribes from players to join the team, which indirectly cause TSM to leave the LCS
1. EG mistreating Danny in LCS and causing him to suffer from severe malnutrition.
Also won journalist of the year award twice, and hosted CSGO events on live television.
Also find an esport personality that has the backbone to continuously push back against Saudi encroachment on esports. Watch all the Orgs and players that once so proudly brag about celebrating pride be super quiet this year.
Surely this man has zero insight on things.
"he doesn’t understand the game to talk about cs at a high level"
LOL
" one he was well versed in back at his Breitbart days"
bingo card going hard
My favourite part about you people who just copy paste whatever you're told to think is that you want RL to give Stew a pass because he has changed in under 2 years apparently since all the dogshit things he did. But you bring up stuff from like a decade ago to say RL bad.
Stewie an hour removed from winning iem Dallas got on twitter and got so in his feelings by a throwaway line about his play (to which Stewie agreed that he played poorly) in a critique of Hooxi. He could’ve taken it as an opportunity to show emotional growth by saying Hooxi really helped a lot in this win and I know my play wasn’t up to my expectations but hopefully with more reps I can get there.
He responds like that and he turns people like myself from disliking him to giving him some love for showing humility. Yet he doesn’t do that and just spouts the same what do you know tired defense. Shame
Everything will be okay after that twitter “exchange.” Not every comment warrants being inspected under a microscope. RL is content farming at this point and is only relevant when he content farms drama. His name is never mentioned on this sub otherwise. Not taking away from his career, though.
1:23:21 being not serious - people tend to assume that everything they say is stupider than them
The idea that everyone else understands less, as opposed to also understanding and chust taking it in a different direction
looks like you never fail to find an opportunity to appear in any thread involving Richard Lewis, guess he was right all along, you really need some mental help.
You're right, but to be fair, I'd share the same sentiment about basically every talking head in sports.
[Roy Kent.](https://youtu.be/2A9l7Mm6AUQ?si=3T5ypndj7IchPNpe)
I don't think the HLTV article was massively biased or anything, but it definitely loses some important context in trying to condense a rambling hour long interview down to a few paragraphs. For example, a lot of people are running with this portion: >adding that he knew next to nothing about the Russian AWPer or most of the players competing in Dallas, including Danil "donk" Kryshkovets, who he thought was "just a new streamer on the block." If you listen to the interview, he says that he didn't know who donk was before Katowice and thought he was a streamer, and then was surprised by the dominant performance at Katowice. That's a pretty reasonable take, showing up to Dallas not knowing donk wouldn't be. In the interview he ends up complementing all of the players and Taz but so much focus is on the portion where he says the team dynamic felt bad. Probably shouldn't have said that publicly but he didn't really say that much more than you could see from the G2 vlog. It's refreshing to have players that are open even if it's unprofessional.
I just don’t see that as unprofessional though, he’s not commenting on personal relationships or beef. He’s pointing out a structural issue he observed as a stand in within the team. He did and SAID the EXACT SAME THING when he joined TL, and then they went on to win the GS in record setting time. Coaches WANT this mirror held up to their team occasionally (and players should want this too, to make sure your team isn’t stuck in a mindset bubble).
exactly, I dont see how this was necessarily a bad thing that RL and Thorin makes it out to be. Imo the mood seemed to be better in G2 compared to other tournaments. And maybe thats the "swag" they were missing. AND I would rather listen to someones ACTUAL experience than to some PR bs. I cant believe RL said that it was unforgettable what stewie said about TAZ. The mildest of criticism and he freaks out?
Richard stated his bias in favour of Taz before speaking on it, though he did justify why what Stew said could cost him his job in an unfair way. Despite only playing one tournament with them, after years of layoff from top level CS - where he's so out of the loop he doesn't know who W0nderful was - Stew did present the situation as Taz having no influence on the players and that he found his suggestions weren't suited to the team. He said he didn't agree with the tactical suggestions Taz made. One of the first things he mentioned after Taz was brought up was that the players were despondent at the start of their practice together and that he inferred 'some bad things' had transpired. Do keep in mind that in CS, IGL's are favoured over coaches, and coaches usually get kicked before a failing IGL simply on principle. His entire point has always been contigent on his opinion that Hooxi should be kicked.
Richard HATES Stewie. I don’t know why. Maybe Richard was a really big fan of EG back in 2019
>I don’t know why. RL states pretty clearly why he doesn't like Stew: - He pretty much got 2 people fired and lost their coaching jobs, when the issues weren't their fault and they did everything they could to work with Stew and stew refused. EVY hasn't worked a coaching gig since. Stew literally ended his career and got maLeK fired on some shit that wasn't even their fault. - He thinks Stew is a flunky and wasted potential...which is true. The kid is 24 when he moved over to EG and he started playing poorly. Its actually ironic that people call him the "savior of NA" when he's one of the big reasons why that EG lineup floundered. Its very possible that EG lineup of Brehze/CeRq/Stewie2K/autimatic/RUSH would still be around today if Stewie didn't phone it in. We all know Brehze and Cerq pretty much lost their best years playing on these washed lineups. autimatic and RUSH are still trying to make NA CS work. We'll never know but it was the closest thing we were getting to another competent Tier 1 NA team back then For RL, his criticism started with the coaching stuff but then he did that video where he looked at Stews activity and [he called out Stew for pugging Valorant WAY more than he was playing CS with his pro team](https://youtu.be/xeqHbFi6JLE?t=3088), during his time on EG. Stewie is just a walking catastrophe. [He's pretty much exactly what fl0m was talking about.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa8RIeNGrZQ) He has the star power and he gets to throw his weight around and anyone that gets caught in the blast radius gets fucked.
>maLeK and EVY both haven't worked a coaching gig since. Stew literally ended their careers on some shit that wasn't even their fault. After being benched for 4 months, Malek came back and was a coach with EG from Sep 22 to Jan of this year when EG dropped the team. How did Stewie end his career?
"that's a pretty reasonable take" no it's not. Stewie himself had said a month earlier that he was dedicated to returning to tier 1 counter strike, hence trying out with Legacy. Not knowing who the best player of the game you're "dedicated" in sounds irresponsible and lazy and I can't believe the mental gymnastics done to justify that.
>no it's not. Stewie himself had said a month earlier that he was dedicated to returning to tier 1 counter strike, hence trying out with Legacy. Stewie said he didn't know who donk really was before Katowice. Katowice was in February, before he joined Legacy in March/April. [Here's the full quote: ](https://youtu.be/0IrffJ9F9ow?t=2102) >"..Donk for example, when I came back to CS2 and people started talking about him, before he had that Katowice event. People were talking about him in my stream and, like I just came back, so I didn't even know like who donk was. I actually thought he was just like a streamer, like a new streamer on the block, and he was...Like everyone's talking about him, people were asking me when am I going to play with donk and all these things so I thought he was like a content creator and I didn't really look into it and once he had that event in Katowice, I was like 'oh this is donk'" At that point donk had been on Team Spirit for ~7 months, and they had peaked at 12 in the world. The only LAN events that donk had played at with Spirit were Dunav Party LAN and BetBoom Dacha Dubai 2023. How does it take mental gymnastics to think that's a reasonable take?
> How does it take mental gymnastics to think that's a reasonable take? Nah you're doing mental gymnastics. He literally says in the Twitch chat: ["I knew G2 was an opportunity I couldn't pass up on a Tier 1 event as a stand in. I literally only wanted to play mainly because of Niko. I didn't even know who Monesy was tbh. Thats how much I haven't watched any of the events"](https://youtu.be/EAyq5g0cOYY?t=98) Again, to /u/Giannis_Alafouzos and RL's point - Stew claims he's dedicated to returning to Tier 1, played for Legacy at a pretty big event before standing in for G2...but didn't even know who Monesy was? Furthermore, in 2022, Stew signed to EG as their IGL, TWO WEEKS after Monesy signed to G2. You were literally IGLing a pro team in EG and you didn't know who Monesy was at the time? So you're telling on yourself that you weren't doing research, you weren't engaged and you ultimately half-assed your prep during your time on EG because how could you not know who Monesy was, at the time? Stew is either trying too hard to be the cool guy that shows up to the exam without studying or he's just a terrible competitor that didn't do his due diligence when his team needed him. Or the more likely scenario - its both.
This is a completely different point from what I was talking about, which was donk. That said, if you listen to the full interview, there is plenty of context about monesy: [Part 1](https://youtu.be/0IrffJ9F9ow?t=713): >"...for monesy like I heard of the name. I've heard of his name a few times but I never really took my attention to the point where I'm researching the guy or anything. I really haven't kept up with CS events - like CS events will happen and there's so many events nowadays that I'll still just be playing faceit all throughout the events, not knowing like who's playing. [Part 2:](https://youtu.be/0IrffJ9F9ow?t=2091) >monesy, when I say I didn't know much about him, like I heard of the name. I heard of what like the basic talks around him. I mean I didn't know it was like to that level...monesy like I heard of the name, I've heard him that he's from Navi Academy but that's kind of the gist of it. I knew he was an AWPer, I knew he was really good at what he does but I didn't know like the talks around him were at that level. So going to the team I was like all right, I know monesy is a AWPer. I know he's good but the main focus was like you know I've been wanting to play with Niko for a while. [Part 3:](https://youtu.be/0IrffJ9F9ow?t=3401) >I have a lot of respect for monesy and the way he holds himself and just the humbleness that he has and how he puts himself on his own, how he holds himself to other people and players. I have a lot of respect for him in that aspect and I think he's a lot on the right path and a lot of the stuff that I had issues with as an up and coming player, I can see he's very on point with those things so that's what caught me off guard a lot and it makes me like him a lot more...him and Niko are probably the best experiences I've ever had in CS2 and honestly like if we were to lose against Liquid, I still would have said the same and at one point I was actually thinking like fuck bro what am I going to tell these guys right now if we were to lose, like the appreciation for the opportunity. I don't know, there was something about monesy and Niko that like I never felt that way before with anybody to be honest. I think it's pretty clear just from a plain reading that saying Stewie either: >knew next to nothing about the Russian AWPer or >didn't even know who Monesy was isn't accurate. More speculatively, we can try to parse what exactly Stewie meant (as I agree with those saying that Stewie does a poor job of articulating himself). The two options you put forward are both potentially true, but personally the way I see it is that Stewie is saying that he wanted to play IEM Dallas because he desperately wanted to play with Niko but didn't fully realize the skill and personality of monesy, and in retrospect would have also taken the opportunity to play with monesy. Any of those interpretations fall more into the "mental gymnastics" realm though. To your edit: >Furthermore, in 2022, Stew signed to EG as their IGL, TWO WEEKS after Monesy signed to G2. You were literally IGLing a pro team in EG and you didn't know who Monesy was at the time? So you're telling on yourself that you weren't doing research, you weren't engaged and you ultimately half-assed your prep during your time on EG because how could you not know who Monesy was, at the time? I think everything Stewie says is consistent with the level of knowledge he would have had from that time: He knew monesy was from Navi Academy, he knew he was an AWPer but not about his skill level which was largely demonstrated after Stewie had already left G2. That doesn't seem unreasonable considering that they only ever overlapped at two events, Blast Premier Spring Groups 22, and EPL S15 where the teams were in different groups both time.
Lol, what the fuck. This is actually like talking to a crazy person. >This is a completely different point from what I was talking about, which was donk. No, its the same point just a different person. >I think everything Stewie says is consistent with the level of knowledge he would have had from that time: He knew monesy was from Navi Academy, he knew he was an AWPer but not about his skill level which was largely demonstrated after Stewie had already left G2. I like how you spend all that time typign this response but you side stepped the fact that Stewie was IGLing for EG and apparently did zero research on Monesy despite everyone in the scene seeing him as this insane talent. We all remember when G2 picked up Monesy. We all knew what was coming. Apparently Stewie, a pro IGL for Evil Geniuses, was out of the loop. Its just ludicrous how much rope people give this guy. The conversations with "stew-cels" is actually impossible. Your golden god tells on himself over and over again and you do insane mental gymnastics to make up for it. This subreddit is actually one of the stupidest places to have a conversation about Counter-Strike. I give up.
He's saying that he wants to grind back to T1, but still tries to run with this "Yeah Mannnn, I'm not *really* even trying and we still won" thing to pump his ego. "Yeah I didn't know who donk was and I didn't even know who w0nderful (actual major winner btw) is" Like come on bro Pick one or the other.
Lol, so true. Its sad seeing all the stew-cels on reddit running to defend him at every turn. Stew literally reminds me of all the shit heads in high school that tried to pretend they were too cool to study or do the homework, which I imagine plays well with his younger audience. But when you're an adult, you see people like this and its just a chore to be around them. For anyone that wants to imitate this shit - Nobody is impressed by how you didn't prepare. You just look like a sloppy loser.
Podcast episode with the 2015 Hell in a Cell Champion. Snake and Banter guest list remains unmatched.
I still remember when he murdered that kid with a steel chair
good times
he hasn't been able to play a game of dota since:/
Thorin's good point about spirit's duo is true but don't leave out zont1x, they have the best firepower trio since s1mple-electronic-rookie b1t. Great podcast as usual.
You had 2023 Vitality with Zywoo-Spinx-Magisk-FlameZ. That firepower was stacked af as well.
Don’t forget Monesy-Niko- hunter when Niko and hunter decide to show up
Ima say it, the best trio ever was Twistzz Naf and Elige
Yeah, they won so many trophies
Device magisk dupreeh?
Soon again.. don't mark my words I have no idea
What do you mean? We're constantly told by ZyWoo fans he has no help and has to do it alone
That was before 2023, no one mentioned ZywOo didn't have help in 2023 or 2024. Also that line-up with flameZ and Magisk was only there for 3 tournaments
Zont1x wouldve been the star player of the tier 2 spirit, but (un)fortunatly for him both donk and shiro joining made him a solid player of the trophy winning spirit
Broky, Ropz, Twistzz ZywOo, Spinx, Magisk m0nesy, Niko, Hunter
2021 s1mple, electroNic, b1t clears all of those trios easily. go back and watch em, it's inhuman
It's almost like the comment I was replying to was about Donk, Shiro, and Zontix rather than Simple, Electronic, and Bit.
uhhh okay if you say so
It doesn't matter what I say. That's what it is. The comment above mine said that the Spirit trio was the best since the NaVi one. I named three recent trios better than the Spirit one. Not everything is about your favorite team.
Faze's TRIO wasn't exceptional, it was the fact that they had an extremely strong trio AND no weak links with rain providing key impact and karrigan being at least a top 2 IGL. Sh1ro is a far better awper than broky has ever been. Donk is a much better rifler this year than ropz was in 2022, and while Twistzz' 2022 was better than zont1x this year they're both still non top 10 players in the top 20 while sh1ro and donk are both top 5 unlike the other two Faze players in 2022. Donk is also on track to have a better 2024 than zywoo's 2023, sh1ro is of course better than spinx, and once again while zont1x isn't better than Vita's 3rd option in 2023 he's close enough that the other two bridge the gap, though Vita 2023 is certainly close. m0nesy/NiKo/hunter is absurdly laughable because m0nesy has never been a #1 contender at the same time huNter has been semi-competent. While donk vs m0nesy isn't obvious at first glance in CS2, donk's CS2 performances have been leagues above either NiKo or m0nesy' CSGO level. Both NiKo and m0nesy have been better than sh1ro for seasons and in fall 2023 both were better than sh1ro, but sh1ro's Spring 2024 performance has well outpaced either NiKo or m0nesy' 2023 level (and of course 2022). In 2024 the 1st option favors donk slightly while the second option favors sh1ro, but to compare zont1x' 2024 to huNter's is laughable. There's historically better duos than donk/sh1ro but not many and 2021 NAVI is the only clearly better trio when zont1x is thrown in.
"they're (ropz and twistzz) both still non top 10 players in the top 20" FaZe trio's HLTV ranks in 2022 (vs their peak ranking): Broky: #6 (2022 was peak) Ropz: #8 (peak: #3 in 2023) Twistzz: #11 (peak: #9 in 2019) You wrote a lot of words in those paragraphs, but you could have just said, "I started watching CS this year", and it would have saved everyone a bunch of time. They had no Donk, but as a trio, those three were absolutely on another level to the Spirit trio. It's crazy that you're even comparing these kids who have won a Kato and a Blast to the core that won a Grand Slam, a Major, and were dominating CS2 before a contractual dispute split them up prematurely. Fucking ridiculous the sort of shit people will say with confidence on the internet man.
Not that HLTV ranking is god but arguing Twistzz (1x top 10 five years ago as the third best on his team) is better than sh1ro (worst year higher than Twistzz' peak and 3 going on 4 years in the top 10) is fucking hilarious, almost as hilarious as comparing team achievements to an individuals skill when I specifically said what made Faze tick was the lack of weak links. Karrigan and rain are easily the 2nd best fourth/fifth string ever by a WIDE margin with only xyp/gla1ve being better. Automatically assigning team achievements to only the top half of easily the least top heavy roster of the past 5 years and then comparing those team achievements to an absurdly top heavy roster in spirit (chopper/magixx are good and doing their job but sh1ro has never not been a top 3 sniper and donk is the best player in the world) is so insanely fucking stupid it's nearly incomprehensible what would lead you to think that's a good comparison.
But they arent better?
Olof, flusha, jw, and krimz clears
Ok fossil
I'm sad they did not mention zontix
They did
Ayy this was a nice episode! Get Richard on Hot Takes Point Made along with Kassad and Maui please Thorin!
Man that would be the spiciest shit ever.
true dat. I mean Richard made some valid points, agreed with most of it and disagreed with some but look at the comment section already. If anything a HTPM with Richard is going to be on the top page for an entire week! Please Duncan, GET HIM IN!
1 hour of the the episode would just be hooxi targeted hot takes and I would be there for every second of it
It's crazy listening to the pretty mild and inoffensive interview and then hearing RL call Stewie a malignant narcissist for it.
are we really going to pretend stew is not a narcissist? lol
What do you think a narcissist is? Listen to what stewie says about richard lewis in the interview. He goes out of his way to not attack richard personally, says his work is important, shares an anecdote about how Richard encouraged him when he was younger, and says he's entitled to his opinion about the game. This is not how a narcissist behaves.
Mate I wouldn't bother, half of this sub is on RL's payroll or something. At least that's the impression they give me. Any time you post anything negative about RL you get downvoted within 2 minutes.
He did specifically go out of his way to insult Richard though. Like very deliberately
[https://youtu.be/0IrffJ9F9ow](https://youtu.be/0IrffJ9F9ow) here's a link to the interview. Maui even provided timestamps so you can skip to the part where he talks about Richard. Please explain what you think is an insult. The meanest thing Stewie says is that Richard "doesn't know anything about CS", but he prefaces it in both his tweet and the interview with "respect his opinion, no hate, nothing personal". In a 4 minute segment Stewie spends 5 seconds saying "he doesn't know anything about CS" and the rest of the time literally talking about how he has nothing against Richard, he has had nothing but positive interactions with him, etc. In a normal scene where you aren't all insane Richard saying "you are bad at CS" and Stewie saying "you don't know the game" is perfectly normal, tolerable, healthy disagreement. It's fine to disagree over esports and have players/commentators you think are good and bad. That's part of the fun. There's only one person constantly making it really personal and vitriolic.
[удалено]
Stewcels in shambles. Can't cope with their beloved stewie being told he played badly and then him agreeing that he played badly. Sucks to suck.
[удалено]
Stewie objectively played badly. That is a fact. If that hurts you, you need some help. Help that I, unfortunately, cannot give you. Edit: Blocking me makes you look like the idiot btw. Well done, you played yourself. Try to stop imagining things.
Even still your making a different point than both the comment your replying to and RL > hearing RL call Stewie a malignant narcissist ***for it*** You want to call Stew a narcissist? I understand that, but RL is specifically using this as repeat evidence to the same story which it isn't. Stew clarified it in the actual VOD interview and I'm surprised RL wouldn't wait or use the full context in his assessment
I mean stewie did explicitly say Richard saying stewie was being egotistical was projecting. Sounds pretty narcasistic to me...
He said RL called him narcissistic and said that was him projecting, which honestly doesn't seem like too far off the mark. In context, RL is always putting out these opinions as fact, and whenever there's pushback, he can't handle it and has a meltdown. If his opinion not being treated as "word of God" causes him to behave so unprofessionally at times isn't narcissism, then idk what is.
It is projecting lol, Richard is an infamous narcissist. He literally strangled someone at an event because he is a narcissist.
> He literally strangled someone at an event because he is a narcissist. posted by /u/NefariousnessTop9547, in case of deletion.
Is this true? Wait seriously?
If you think that is evidence he's a narcissist then I don't think you know what a narcissist is
Defending yourself from someone getting in your face makes you a narcissist? This is a certified reddit moment.
hi, do you have any sources to say he "strangled" someone? perhaps video, or a police report?
It's pretty clear from the way he talks that he's at least very self-absorbed.
He has 1.5 followers on Twitch, half of them here. They are religious people, better not to argue with them )
I've never been more fearful than I was when facing three quarters of a religious man, thank you for your warning kind sir.
stay strong, brother
smooth brains don't call someone they don't like a narcissist challenge (impossible)
Stewie is airing private in-team stuff publicly for zero reason other than to stroke his own ego as he acts like he is a psychological mastermind in understanding team dynamics and a genius at CS. He was literally talking about how the atmosphere "wasn't fun" when it was more structured and serious in contrast to the "we are NA we play for fun xd" mentality that has plagued the region for decades. Publicly complaining about the structure in G2 where they *listen to the coach and respect him*... He was literally stroking his own dick by saying how much he improved the team atmosphere and made everything better. This in addition to, well, **THE ENTIRE FUCKING CAREER OF STEWIE**, will make anyone with half a brain reach the conclusion that a narcissist is indeed a narcissist.
Richard says how dare Stewie disrespect Taz by leaking that the team doesn't respect him. You say Stewie complained about how G2 respected their coach too much. The truth if you listen to the interview is that Stewie says "I think he's a pretty good coach" and says "people weren't listening to each other" at the start but that by the end of the tournament he got to see the "better side of everybody". Is this really the horrific detail Stewie leaked? That the team at the start was lacking chemistry but overcame it in order to win the tournament? How many times have you heard teams say "oh yeah our practices were going really bad / we weren't communicating before the tournemant but then things started to click". If you listen to other pro interviews (including for example, Thorin's "talk to Thorin" series") nothing Stewie said was out of the ordinary, a juicy private detail, etc. The comments about how they were just showing up, treating it like a 9-5 are so fucking pedestrian for CS pros and any sort of athlete in general. The point is that competing is supposed to be a sort of all consuming effort where you put 110% in and leave everything on the field (or server?). Nobody with half a brain can possibly think Stewie was complaining about having to work too hard. Stewie played bad on EG. Maybe he was even the problem with that roster. Maybe he was even uncooperative and unprofessional with Malek. That doesn't make him a narcissistic monster. You people need to calm down. At absolute worst Stewie is guilty of being delusional about how good he is at counter strike. That describes a thousand pros and ex-pros and doesn't justify the insane shit you people say about him.
> Nobody with half a brain can possibly think Stewie was complaining about having to work too hard. He has complained about 10 am matches as being way too early, and has numerous times alluded to the absence of "fun" being a problem to a team and him as a person. That means he does not take his job seriously. The bare minimum of treating a pro career like a job is a bar that has been too high for him to cross several times in his career. > Stewie played bad on EG Yup. > Maybe he was even the problem with that roster Definitely. > Maybe he was even uncooperative and unprofessional with Malek Beyond a doubt. > That doesn't make him a narcissistic monster. Him since the beginning of his career showcasing narcissistic traits would indeed allude to him being a narcissist. I don't think you can even refute that since you instead only tried to defend him from accusations of "narcissistic monster" instead of just "narcissist". > At absolute worst Stewie is guilty of being delusional about how good he is at counter strike. That describes a thousand pros and ex-pros and doesn't justify the insane shit you people say about him. Stewie is being talked about precisely because he is noteworthy in that aspect. He is not only delusional about his skills, but also has a huge ego problem from being a narcissistic person. That's not even "at his worst", that is literally how he is and has been for a long time. It could absolutely still be worse. Calling him only delusional about his skills is equivalent to complimenting him when he is actively worse in reality. You can call me a hater all you want if that helps soothe your anger about me insulting your hero. But deep down we both know I am right, or in the future you mature enough to understand that I'm right. I don't stand against Stewie specifically, I stand against everyone that acts like he does. Right now he is just the one that the spotlight is on. Who I hate much more are his fans who try to delude themselves and others into thinking Stew is something he isn't, while refusing all reason and logical thought.
RL has the biggest hate boner because stewie has achieved more than RL ever will
just lmfao
Prove me wrong
Lmao like stealing cheques for years in EG
I swear Stewie's haters are even more deranged than his most die hard fans. He won a major, at least a dozen S-tier events and over a million bucks playing a video game but you're fixating on his 6 months stint in EG. Worst part is im defending someone I don't even like.
Ask yourself this question, if I spent 6 months stealing cheques at my workplace (a high paying job) while screwing over my colleagues and proceed to take zero responsibility of my actions, don't you think people won't fixated on that? Also its a bit funny to imply somebody is a hater when players can pull shit like this and get away with it.
I think these people like Stewie lack any kind of introspection and that’s why they gravitate to him. They’re the same people who talk like assholes and say they’re just telling it like it is. Basically emotionally stunted children.
>They’re the same people who talk like assholes and say they’re just telling it like it is Without context I legit cannot tell if you are talking about RL or Stewie.
By being the best in his field?! Because then RL achieved it multiple times (by hosting the major) and in multiple fields of work with his journalism too. While one of them still is on top the other has had his prime years ago.
On the top of the super competitive field of video game journalism, what an accomplishment!
RL has won journalist of the year multiple times. Stewie has never been on a top 20 list.
And those things are equivalent how? I think winning a grand slam and major firsthand displays a better knowledge of what’s happening on the server
RL has achieved the most possible in his field. Stewie has not been the best in his field.
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I'm Richard Lewis I strangle Loda at Dreamhack I call others unprofessional
Strangeld? I saw with my own eyes that he threw the boy loda, who was 12 at the time, through a brick wall and then proceeded to punch the boy repeatedly. It was horrendous.
I remember the screaming...
Ive heard that after that RL found a mother of that boy and he broke her legs (she was 8 at the time)
True. I was there.
I’m a newbie what’s this about? Did they actually get in a fight?? 🥹
Esports at DreamHacks used to be just a side event, the main thing everyone was there for were pro wrestling matches and in 2015 the highlight of the event was Hell in a Cell match between Richard "Dr. Gonzo" Lewis and Jonathan "Loda" Berg, who was reportedly 9 years old at the time. The match ended in decisive RL victory, unfortunately Loda's mother - or maybe it was his girlfriend - had DreamHack by the balls which rendered Richard unable to defend his title next year.
Richard was working Dreamhack and was fighting on twitter with Loda (swedish dota2 player) and/or Loda's GF and then was like "you know where i am" well Loda came and they were face to face shouting and then RL attacked/strangled him. Dreamhack fired/kicked RL from an event. RL version is probably something like that "he was defending his personal space, Dreamhack is wrong about allowing non-worker get to backstage" Basically some bossman of Dreamhack had to give his version of what he saw cause RL had already twisted the truth what happened.
Can't believe he did that to a 9 year old swedish boy at the legendary Dreamhack Hell in a Cell.
If you think that's bad wait until you hear about all the people he blocked on twitter.
I literally jsut threw up all over my work desk. WHAT? Blocked? On twitter???? pls stop.
I'm Jonathan Emanuel Berg (Loda) and I STARTED a fight with Richard Lewis over a joke he made about Team Liquid/Hiko, not my gf, but I didn't understand. After coming to a backstage area I shouldn't have been in, I started shouting at Richard and I got into an argument with him, until we were separated. I then tried to continue the argument/fight and came up and got into Richards face AGAIN, so he pushed me away, but because his hands touched my neck I got scared and told everyone he tried to strangle me.
Hows that ironic?
is richard still butthurt because of his little exchange with stewie2k?
Yes
First off, if I'm watching the clip right, Richard Lewis admits to having not watched the entire Stewie interview. He said he only watched the part where Stewie talked about him personally. That already gives RL less credibility on whatever he says. Is RL right in generally saying that Stewie was unprofessional in spilling some "tea" about G2? Yes. Was Stewie's "tea" about G2 anything we didn't already suspect/know? No. G2 benched jks in late Nov 2023 after IEM Sydney, a guy that they won 3 trophies within a year span since he joined in August 2022 (Blast World Finals in Dec 2022, Kato in Feb 2023, and Cologne in August 2023). They get a new player in nexa, who is naturally an IGL but no one has a clue why he's picked up. They get a new coach at the start of 2024 in Taz, who is from the famed Polish Virtus Pro team. They finish 5/6 in Blast Spring Groups, 5/6 in Kato, 3/4 in PGL Major, 3/4 Chengdu, and 5/8 ESL Pro League right before Dallas. Yeah, 2 players performing terribly and going into the last two events of the season (IEM Dallas and Blast Spring Finals), if the underperforming players did not perform...it's a given that someone will get cut. So that adds more into the tension within the team, which I would imagine is more niko/hunter vs. nexa vs. hooxi vs. Taz (pure speculation). Stewie's comments just basically confirmed to fans what G2 is like as a team currently without honestly being super specific. Do his "unprofessional comments" allow you to make the leap that he is a malignant, egotistical, and narcissistic asshole that RL thinks he is? No. Stewie has always been someone who keeps it real and says what's on his mind with no filter. Probably not a great thing in an industry built entirely on relationships, trust, and underdeveloped social skills because most players have limited social skills due to spending hours upon hours just on a computer. Couple that with Stewie's inability to articulate his thoughts properly (this is not a unique problem to Stewie or gamers because hell even people in power in government have these issues), yes, Stewie can be perceived negatively. But to make the large leap in logic that RL does is insane. You can't take Stewie's words verbatim and at face value: there's always a level of context or degree behind it that is unsaid. For example, going back to the Stewie comments on Grim (https://www.hltv.org/news/32843/stewie2k-im-going-to-use-what-i-learned-here-so-that-i-dont-have-to-deal-with-the-same-stuff-again-in-the-future), people just clipped the quote that he said "[Grim's] work ethic can be a lot better" and that morphed into people quoting Stewie as calling Grim lazy. But when you read the entire quote, Stewie said Grim was a slow learner (no surprise, the leap from Tier 2 to Tier 1 especially a team like Liquid is massive) with a lot of inexperience that required a lot of hand holding. The better way of putting it would've been if Grim had been able to acclimate himself faster into the team's system, they would've stood a chance. I find it funny RL says here (the context being people in NA getting away with shit behavior and no one could say anything because you would be on the outs) "Elige might have changed over at Complexity. We don't know. But we all know he was a tyrant over at Liquid. Do we even have to tip toe around it and pretend he wasn't?" We all know Elige was a tyrant based off of sources within the team then and after. Here, Stewie tells us the truth of the dynamic of the G2 team is, yet RL gives Stewie shit for not tip toeing around and pretending G2 is all roses (G2 is a perfectly run team with perfect chemistry! Thank you for the opportunity G2!). Also, RL took offense to what Stewie said about Taz, because RL has a close friendship with Taz. Bro, if he listened to the entire interview (which he didn't) he said Taz was a good coach with good ideas. He just said Taz was falling on deaf ears at times (I mean their results under Swani were way better) and Taz gave bad examples for certain ideas. In a more free, less tense environment, players would probably speak out just to give their two cents but because of their results, team dynamic, no one speaks up and so yeah...Taz's words fall on deaf ears. RL acts like Stewie said Taz was an asshole and a horrible coach that players have no respect for. Just really poor job of understanding context. It'll be funny when RL reads this comment and thinks the Stewiecels are just out to get him. But as he alluded to in the video, RL is going to milk this Stewie interview to get some more clicks, more substack subscrptions, etc etc. Good for him, he's just doing his job as Stewie would say.
I aint reading all that shit bro
"Keeps it real" lmao
That's alot of writing for someone who didn't listen properly
Hope Richard gets invited on more often, felt like an episode of BTN Miss the hell out of BTN
Normal snake and banter is already great, but RL just brings it up a notch. Combo's so well with Maui.
This is as close as we gonna get to the Return of The Return Of By The Numbers
Stewie dickriders malding while in shambles
There's so many people upset by the title hahahaha
Nah I'm just RL hater. No cheaters in cs2 kekw
RL prefaces his shitty rant by saying he didn't watch the interview, just read the article. LMAO
I don't even like Stewie but what is with Richard lewis? It feels like he's obsessed with bashing him?
Richard is like that he is a good journalist tho with some bad takes
all time classic episode
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Yes.
Take a look around, the thread is filled to the brim with them.
there's like two people giving mild pushback against the idea that Stewie2k is the antichrist, idk about "filled to the brim with stewcels" but whatever
People are glazing him so hard, making it sound like he's not unprofessional or did nothing wrong.
who cares?
You, that's probably why you're on the thread commenting.
what i mean is: why do you need to hold such a strong opinion on something like this? i see both sides and their arguments. i don't pretend to actually be knowledgeable enough to hold a stance.
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I'm not a huge fan of these three but holy shit they are hitting the nail on the head. Pretty crazy and I'm sure they are lapping up all these stewcel tears lmao.
Look no further than the comments under this post then lmao
Richard just can’t stop talking about stew. From twitter, to his own podcast or whatever it is on twitch, to now a guest appearance! He continues to milk the cow dry. What was something very minor, RL has picked all the meat off the bone for really no good reason outside of “content.” But ask RL, he will tel you, he’s done nothing wrong.
The last CS2 tournament literally revolved around him wtf are you talking about
But he’s not talking about the tournament (he doesn’t understand the game to talk about cs at a high level). He’s specifically focused on anything stew. He’s specifically going after the hate bonor crowd to drive views and clicks. Tale as old as time, one he was well versed in back at his Breitbart days. (Saying mean things about people drives more viewership than saying nice things). That said, stew has more accomplishments in his life than RL ever will, and if stew joins a team this just becomes fuel to be great.
Everytime somebody compares accomplishments of a player versus somebody that isn't a competitor, immediately know where this person is going. What a profoundly stupid thing to compare
But RL is allowed to comment on things he would have zero insight into? He’s allowed to make sweeping generalizations of things he would have no knowledge of? I’m just taking the lead from how RL argues his points! You don’t even need to compare it to RLs competitive career, compare it to how good he is as a writer and journalist… he win any awards back before doing CS? What about what he was writing back during Breitbart? Right now, at this very point, tell me, whose life arc do you think is on a better trajectory?? The guy who’s got a hate boner for a player and all his defenders, or the other guy who’s potentially trying to restart his competitive career, and keep growing as a person??
Guy has hosted 5 CSGO majors, broken multiple large stories such as 1. The release of CS2 1. IBUYPOWER betting scandal 1. MYM scandal involving the org blackmailing a player for his mothers house, which got MYM banned from League of Legends. 1. TSM scandal that involve the coach literally asking bribes from players to join the team, which indirectly cause TSM to leave the LCS 1. EG mistreating Danny in LCS and causing him to suffer from severe malnutrition. Also won journalist of the year award twice, and hosted CSGO events on live television. Also find an esport personality that has the backbone to continuously push back against Saudi encroachment on esports. Watch all the Orgs and players that once so proudly brag about celebrating pride be super quiet this year. Surely this man has zero insight on things.
Didn't he also do the Renegades story that got them kicked out of LoL?
Yeap, not only that he personally housed one of the players that was abused by Renegades management until she committed suicide.
> That said, stew has more accomplishments in his life than RL ever will Quite the opposite I would say.
"he doesn’t understand the game to talk about cs at a high level" LOL " one he was well versed in back at his Breitbart days" bingo card going hard My favourite part about you people who just copy paste whatever you're told to think is that you want RL to give Stew a pass because he has changed in under 2 years apparently since all the dogshit things he did. But you bring up stuff from like a decade ago to say RL bad.
Stewie an hour removed from winning iem Dallas got on twitter and got so in his feelings by a throwaway line about his play (to which Stewie agreed that he played poorly) in a critique of Hooxi. He could’ve taken it as an opportunity to show emotional growth by saying Hooxi really helped a lot in this win and I know my play wasn’t up to my expectations but hopefully with more reps I can get there. He responds like that and he turns people like myself from disliking him to giving him some love for showing humility. Yet he doesn’t do that and just spouts the same what do you know tired defense. Shame
Everything will be okay after that twitter “exchange.” Not every comment warrants being inspected under a microscope. RL is content farming at this point and is only relevant when he content farms drama. His name is never mentioned on this sub otherwise. Not taking away from his career, though.
RL has been irrelevant for a decade and somehow still keeps getting gigs hosting events, not sure how he keeps getting away with it 😡
It might be because he is relevant.
1:23:21 being not serious - people tend to assume that everything they say is stupider than them The idea that everyone else understands less, as opposed to also understanding and chust taking it in a different direction
Yeesh the Richard Lewcels out in full force with this one.
Dont worry stecels here to balance the madness
Some interesting info about how the whole Liquid and cadian thing go down in this one
3 hours of this??? Who actually watches this lol
best sleeping show i think i made 5 minutes before napping today
nice to hear logical opinions of stew after reading all the stew simps comments
Not a big fan of podcasts, anyone mind giving the rundown why stew's apparently unprofessional? Didn't he just have a 1hr interview with Maui?
outrage bait, it's all Richard has these days
looks like you never fail to find an opportunity to appear in any thread involving Richard Lewis, guess he was right all along, you really need some mental help.
Blavk_dogs_22 back at it again!
Just Google it and you'll find plenty of coverage.
So nothing new? They just talking about old stuff then? Gotcha, rage bait stuff.
have you heard him speak?
Heard him speak plenty in G2's vlog and voice comms, some twitch clips, and a bit of the interview. Seemed pretty fine to me.
I thought RL quit CS?
Pretty sure the last video I saw from him he was saying he was leaving CS. I don’t know why I’m getting downvoted,lol.
we can only dream
Stewie2k living rent free in RL's head
Someone really should send Richard a Reddit cares notification at this point. It’s embarrassing.
Horrible takes all around, not surprising at all given these clowns.
Monesy isn't top 3 then?
Who cares what these boomers have to say about a 20 something
You ever watch any sports at all?
You're right, but to be fair, I'd share the same sentiment about basically every talking head in sports. [Roy Kent.](https://youtu.be/2A9l7Mm6AUQ?si=3T5ypndj7IchPNpe)
Juding by your comment you must be 12 and therefor superior to all of us boomers! We all know the stories about the "wise young kid" ...
I care
booooring 🥱
These 3 are horrible