The Los Angeles Valiant have done the seemingly impossible: they broke the Vancouver Titan’s undefeated streak in the regular season. Not only did they have a dominant 3-1 match, but the Valiant also humbled the Titans in front of a crowd full of fans wielding inflatable “Bumper” hammers (made to celebrate Vancouver Main Tank, Sang-beom "Bumper" Park) on the Titan’s community day at the Blizzard Arena.

With the 19-game winning streak, it was a bit shocking to see the Titans fall. However, with a shift to a meta that involves the ability-disabling DPS, Sombra, things were bound to change. We sat down with the Los Angeles Valiant Main Tank, Russell "FCTFCTN" Campbell, to hear his thoughts on why the Titans fell.

“I think [Vancouver] probably should not have matched us on Sombra GOATs today,” said Campbell. “It seemed like they were pretty uncomfortable on the call… I think they sort of played into our hand, which is the opposite of the Vancouver play style. The Vancouver play style is they bully you, and make you play their game. But today we made them play our game.”

FCTFCTN has been a recent addition to the Valiant, but one that has seemed to pay off for the team as the meta shifts. Traded from Mayhem Academy along with Johannes "Shax" Nielsen and Caleb “McGravy” McGarvey in exchange for Pan-seung "Fate" Koo, the main tank has helped the team go four and one since the trade. When asked what he brings to the Valiant, FCTFCTN credited his game sense and ability to predict the flow of a match.



“After we do an Ult check, I simulate how a fights going to go in my head and how it's going to play out,” said FCTFCTN. “It's like, ‘Oh, okay. They want to come here, so I need to be here so they can't do what they want to do here.’ And then we shut them down using this ult or this ability. I'm really good at getting these ideas across to the team as well.”

That sort of shot-calling had been a challenge for the Valiant, brought up by Indy “Space” Halpern in an earlier interview, so seeing a tank brought in to specifically address that gap makes perfect sense. In the case of the match against Vancouver, Campbell laid out the simulations and predictions that the Valiant used to flip the Titans.

(Photo Credit Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment)

“Some main tank players—Bumper, for example—will always go super-aggressive to make space for his team,” continued FCTFCTN. “We said, ‘Hey Bumper's going to go super-aggro. Let's keep pulling his team, let's throw in nades, let's try to hack him, let's try to sleep him, and we can nullify him and shut him out of the game.’ And that's what happened.”

And if you saw the match, you probably saw this happening over and over. Valiant went in with a game plan and executed, taking down the undefeated team. A cherry on top of the win, however, came from a tweet that Campbell had posted earlier in the day.

All I'm saying is...@shaxow, @reprizeOW and I have ended 30 game winn streaks before. — Russell Campbell (@FCTFCTN) June 23, 2019

Sure enough, while on Mayhem Academy the trio (Including Shax and new Valiant Assistant Coach Justin “Reprize” Hand) had shut down another massive win streak, ending Fusion University’s 30-game win streak. When we brought up the tweet, FCTFCTN chuckled.

“I knew that we had a chance, and I think even if I did get pushback back for this tweet—if we ended up losing—like, I was expected to lose,” said Campbell. ”It was just something fun to do.”

With such a solid win in the books, maybe the rest of Overwatch League should be studying the footage from FCTFCTN and LA Valiant's performance against the previously unscratched Titans. Want to see more from the jaw-dropping match? Check out exactly how the Titans vs Valiant match went down last weekend.