OHEB shrugs off doubters as Blacklist restores dominance in lower bracket

SINGAPORE — Doubts were raised when Blacklist International lost to the BloodThirstyKings (BTK) that formally kicked them out of the upper bracket of the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang M3 World Championship here.

The Filipinos found themselves in a tough lower bracket position, but they bounced back with a close 2-1 victory over Indonesian rivals Onic Esports. They then displayed their dominance anew with 3-0 sweep of Brazil's Keyd Stars on Wednesday.

Kiel "OHEB" Soriano said seeing people doubt their abilities is understandable but said they used that setback to regroup and come back stronger in the succeeding matches, all of which were do-or-die situations.

"It's really like that, when you lose a lot of people will become doubters. But if you win, there will be a lot of supporters," OHEB said in Filipino during the post-game press conference.

"But our latest loss against BTK served as our motivation to make up for the loss. We need to win everything in the lower bracket," he added.

Blacklist will now await the loser of the match between another Indonesian team RRQ Hoshi and compatriot Onic Philippines.

"Good luck to their battle and we hope that Onic Philippines wins so that it's PH versus PH in the finals," said Salic "Hadji" Imam.

—MGP, GMA News