A legend in the long history of Quake is making waves again, signing with a premier esports organization and collection championship trophies.
Quake great Anton “Cooller” Singov has signed on with Natus Vincere—and promptly followed that signing with a victory at a MediaMarkt event in Moscow.
The event was the first notable live tournament for Quake Champions and featured a number of winning players from previous Quake games. Singov prevailed in the final over Alexei “Cypher” Yanushevsky by a tight margin of three games to two in a best-of-five series. Also in attendance were Sergey “evil” Orekhov and Nikolay “agent” Mayorov.
The collection of some of Eastern Europe’s best Quake players provided a glimpse at what fans can expect from this weekend’s regional qualifiers for the Quake World Championship. All four players will be attendance at the European qualifier, where a field of 32 will compete for spots at the Quake World Championship in Dallas, Texas.
Still actively being developed through a public beta, Quake Champions has yet to see a great influx of involvement from esports teams and organizations. Some teams have found themselves involved by virtue of having signed a competitor prior to their switch to Quake Champions, like Team Liquid and Shane “rapha” Hendrixson. Rapha had signed with Team Liquid as an Overwatch player before making the jump.
Cooller had also been competing in Overwatch prior to Quake Champions’ public beta, achieving some success with Misfits. But Natus Vincere’s decision to make official their involvement with Quake Champions provided Cooller with an opportunity to continue his professional career with the series in which he made his name.
“We’ve been keeping an eye on Quake Champions for several months already and, after weighing up all the pros and cons, have finally decided to expand into it,” said Natus Vincere CEO Yevhen Zolotarov in a statement. “As for the player choice, we had an easy time picking the right person, as Cooller is a true champion, a born-to-win player.”
For his part, Cooller expressed thanks to the Natus Vincere organization for offering their formal support, even acknowledging Na`Vi’s recent struggles in Counter-Strike and Dota 2 prior to the signing.
“Despite tough times, [Na`Vi] is still on top and I hope I will be able to contribute to its further development,” Cooller said.
The European qualifier for the Quake World Championship begins August 5 in Leicester, England.
