Owen “smooya” Butterfield, who had benched by BIG, has been loaned out to Renegades for ESL Pro League Season 9 Americas.
Smooya has been out of competitive play since February, after deciding to bench himself from the BIG roster, saying that he was not enjoying himself in the roster and was not able to make himself a better player.
Chants of “SMOOOYAAA” will return once again as Smooya will play for Renegades at ESL Pro Season 9 Americas instead of Gratisfaction, who has been declined a visa by the immigration as “internationally recognised enough” according to his tweet.
The Aussie team have also announced that if jkaem is unable to obtain a visa for the event, the team will use Stephen “reltuC” to stand-in for this event.
At ESL Pro Season 9 Americas, Renegades will be playing against eUnited, INTZ, NRG and Renegades in Group A of the tournament. In this tournament format, the winner of each group goes to the season finals while the second and third-placed teams will play one more group stage event.
This move could potentially be damaging for Renegades who recently broke into the top 5 world rankings according to HLTV, after coming 3-4th at StarSeries i-League Season 7.
The Renegades roster for the event will look as:
- [flag=au] Justin “jks” Savage
- [flag=au] Aaron “AZR” Ward
- [flag=au] Jay “Liazz” Tregillgas
- [flag=no] Joakim “jkaem” Myrbostad (in doubt)
- [flag=gb] Owen “smooya” Butterfield (stand-in)
- [flag=us] Stephen “reltuC” Cutler (stand-in if jkaem cannot get a visa)
Cover Photo courtesy of HLTV.org
