SunPayus: "Right now there is not a rank one team in the world"

The IEM Dallas 2023 MVP award recipient shared some words with HLTV after celebrating on-stage with ENCE.

Alvaro "⁠SunPayus⁠" Garcia led the charge in ENCE's title-winning campaign at IEM Dallas 2023, powering the international roster to their first Big Event tournament victory and clinching the HLTV x 1xBet Most Valuable Player (MVP) medal in the process.

HLTV caught up with the Spaniard after the victory to get his thoughts on earning his first MVP award, clinching his first Big Event title, and how it feels to bounce back after a dismal period of results for the team.

SunPayus, congratulations, you're the MVP of IEM Dallas. How does that sound, how does that feel?

Weird because it's the first time I get an MVP in a tier-one tournament, and it's even the first time I win a tier-one tournament so I'm just proud of my team and myself also.

A very strong showing from you throughout this event. Let's quickly go back to yesterday, that game against FaZe on Ancient. A contender for best map of the year already, just walk me through that a bit, some intense moments right?

I remember there was a round that I said to the guys, 'guys I don't care if we win or lose, I'm having so much fun, I'm enjoying a lot.' That defines what happened on the map. I think also for them it was really intense, every round was really close, it was such a funny game.

As you said, your first big event win, your first MVP. When you first joined ENCE the results weren't coming in quite yet, so what does it mean to you to finally get this over the line?

Well, this was the main goal when I joined ENCE, to win tournaments. Right now, at the end of CS:GO, at least we took a tier-one tournament, so I'm really proud and I'm really happy about what happened.

There were moments with Movistar Riders where you were winning a couple of events here and there, you won Valencia, but never quite a title of this stature. What is the potential for ENCE now that you have NertZ and now that you're stepping up and hitting your stride?

I think we are, without any doubt, contenders of whatever tournament right now. I think we can compete against whatever team in the world by far.

The run through the last few events for you, like the Rio Major, the BLAST Major, didn't go as expected obviously. There were also times where you just fell short like at EPL. Actually not just winning Dallas, but winning it in this fashion, 2-0, can we expect you to keep this level up going forward?

I think right now the level of CS:GO is just really high. I don't know what is going to happen in CS2, but I think everyone is really good and that's why you cannot say one team is going to win every single tournament.

That's why I also think that right now there is not a rank one team in the world. Every team is really good, so you have to be at the top, at your maximum level and also have really good momentum in the team to win a tournament.

Almost a year to this date ENCE were standing right here, they went home without a trophy. Now that trophy is yours. Can you tell me a little bit more about walking away with that from here?

We have one more tournament in a few days, but we're going to walk away really proud of ourselves, we put a lot of work in these last 2-3 months with NertZ. There is really big emotions from Snappi, from Maden, from Pavel [dycha] because they needed to win a tier-one tournament and they made it, so I'm really proud of them.

But no emotions from you?

I mean, I'm pretty happy, obviously! But I'm more like... I mean, I'm really happy, but I don't know, I had the feeling today morning that we were going to win this match, 100%.