junior: “My biggest enemy is myself”

After building his name with Triumph, Paytyn “junior” Johnson earned his first opportunity in tier one with Brazilian giants FURIA. Unfortunately for him, the AWP spot on the team has never been the most stable position, with Henrique “HEN1” Telles, Andrei “arT” Piovezen, and Rafael “saffee” Costa all also occupying it at some point during the last three years.

“With FURIA I believe it just wasn’t the right fit, I love those guys and I’ll always cheer for them.” junior told BLIX.GG.

What followed was a loan stint with Bad News Bears, where once again, junior would show his potential by dominating the tier two NA scene with his new team. His time with the team was so dominant in fact, that when Complexity made their return to North America with the signing of the former Extra Salt core, junior was brought in to step into the shoes of Joshua “oSee” Ohm as their AWPer while oSee left for Liquid.

The move to Complexity looked to be the one to catapult junior into superstardom in NA as the team would look to claim the spot as America’s second team, and, while the squad would eventually do so, they would do so without junior on the roster. “With coL, I didn’t play to the standard I know I’m capable of and as a team, we could never get the confidence and spark we needed to climb the rankings as a team.”

After months out, junior once again finds himself in NA’s second tier with a move to Evil Geniuses Black. Now EG’s sole academy roster, the team was handed the opportunity to play at BLAST Spring Showdown, where junior put in a career-great performance versus his former team FURIA.

“I really appreciate Axed and Valens for giving me the chance to show everyone what I’m still able to do inside the server and I’ve made a ton of friends on EG.”

With junior back in the server once again, it’s still not entirely clear what the future holds for him. Being part of the only organization in the region with an academy team, a good string of performances could easily see junior make his way into the main EG team.

To get there though, and even to perform on his new team, junior knows there are some personal improvements he has to make: “My biggest enemy is myself and I bring myself down when things aren’t going the way I want them to, I’ve been working on getting in the right mental space and always staying focused no matter the circumstance.”

Feature Image Credit: PGL/Joao Ferreira