woxic benches himself from EF: "I want to continue my career in an international team"

With the Turkish superteam looking to rebuild, Özgür "⁠woxic⁠" Eker turns his attention to international lineups.

Eternal Fire have announced that woxic has benched himself after fourteen months with the team. This news comes less than a week after it was announced that Ahmet "⁠paz⁠" Karahoca and Canpolat "⁠hardstyle⁠" Yıldıran will no longer be part of the active roster.

Last month Eternal Fire benched their IGL, Engin "⁠MAJ3R⁠" Küpeli, in favour of the younger and previously inactive member of the team Yasin "⁠xfl0ud⁠" Koç. with Ömer "⁠imoRR⁠" Karataş taking over the calling.

The Turkish superteam, as the squad was dubbed, has now parted ways with four members of the roster that failed to qualify for the IEM Rio Major.

For woxic the benching comes at his own request. He was a part of the original roster that formed the team over a year ago and was currently its second highest-rated player in that time behind Ismailcan "⁠XANTARES⁠" Dörtkardeş. The 24-year-old broke down why he made his decision and mentioned a move away from Turkish rosters.

"As a co-founder and player in Eternal Fire, I have decided to bench myself from the active squad. To be honest, I was thinking about benching myself while I was in Malta, once we were eliminated from both tournaments Pro League and RMR Rio," woxic begins to explain, blaming the lack of structure for many problems.

"This decision did not come out of the blue. Since we decided to give water to this project, we could not manage to create a structure. Due to being unstructured we have faced many problems inside of the team, which causes us to have more problems and we could not manage to solve them properly so we decided to continue with updating our roster."

The AWPer continues, explaining that after player changes (additions of paz and MAJ3R), things did improve, but the results were still lacking so more changes followed. "I felt that we need another 1 or 2 years to reach our potential, which affected my motivation deeply and I also had to consider my age therefore I felt that I could not give another try to this project."

"The list continues but none of the reasons matter now cause I wish to continue my career in an international team and will look for new opportunities for the upcoming season. I gave everything within my power and abilities, I wanted to succeed and I felt your support along the way, always. I appreciate your enormous support."

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woxic has made it clear that he intends to return to playing with an international team, something he is no stranger too as he has played on Cloud9, HellRaisers and MOUZ.

With the Major underway and the post-Major shuffle to come shortly, it will be interesting to see what European and international teams can make room for woxic on their roster.

Eternal Fire are now down to three active members:

Ismailcan "⁠XANTARES⁠" Dörtkardeş
Ömer "⁠imoRR⁠" Karataş
Yasin "⁠xfl0ud⁠" Koç

Özgür "⁠woxic⁠" Eker (benched)
Ahmet "⁠paz⁠" Karahoca (inactive)