Wolves captured China’s first-ever Call of Duty Mobile World Championship after taking down Indian side GodLike 4-2 in the grand finals at DreamHack Atlanta. After defeating their fellow Chinese team, Qing Jiu Club, Wolves matched up against a GL team that had just taken down tournament favorite Luminosity Gaming in the semifinals.
Nevertheless, despite the possibility of GL completing their unlikely run to the top, it was Wolves who finished as the world’s best team, breezing past their opponent to become world champions.
Following the Wolves’ CoD Mobile World Championship victory, BLIX talked to Su ‘Anzai’ Ruihao about the team’s successful journey in the tournament, the significance of the achievement for China, adjustments made from the previous year and much more.
Becoming CoD Mobile world champs
Pedro Romero, BLIX: Congratulations on winning the tournament and becoming world champions. Just to start, what’s going through your mind at this time amid this triumph?
Su “Anzai” Ruihao: Although I am happy right now, I don’t think we are good enough and our team can be better. By the time we get back to China, we are going to practice more and analyze our game to see what areas we can improve in to win more games.
BLIX: It’s interesting to hear that after you and your team won a tournament such as this. Why do you feel that way? What caused you to have that mindset right now?
Anzai: I am a very competitive person by nature. We won 4-2, but we lost two games, and we really want to analyze what went wrong in those two games because we feel, in the perfect scenario, we could have beaten them 4-0.
BLIX: And taking the focus onto the grand finals where you faced GodLike, a team that, despite being seen as an underdog, was on fire after taking down Luminosity in the semifinals. Seeing them advance to the grand finals, what was the preparation like for facing GL?
Anzai: It was definitely surprising to see them have such a good run, and it was especially surprising when we saw them take down LG. It is a bit of a shame that we didn’t get to play against LG, but at the same time, during scrims, we played against GL a lot, and the results of those scrims often came out to be 6-4 and 7-3 so we had a lot of confidence going into this final matchup.
BLIX: At which moment during the competition and not just in the grand finals did you start to realize Wolves had an actual shot of winning the world championship?
Anzai: We had that feeling start to settle in when we went 3-0 in the Swiss stage, and then we defeated Tribe [in the quarterfinals], and that’s when we came to the realization that ‘wow, this championship already belongs to us.’
Reflecting on the 2023 season
BLIX: And looking at the team’s history, what with last year’s edition where you guys finished in fourth place, what was the one thing that was adjusted the most within the team that made this run possible?
Anzai: In this past year, we played in the tournament CDFI [Call of Duty Fall Invitational], and we played a lot against Southeast Asian teams. From them, we learned a lot about how to play Hardpoint games and reinforce our control in Search and Destroy games, and with with our new game knowledge on Hardpoint games, we felt unstoppable and we gained lots of confidence coming into this tournament.
BLIX: Have you been getting a sense of what the feeling is like back home in China about your title win from social media and stuff like that?
Anzai: I think the fans in China are overwhelmed and super excited because the best result we’ve ever gotten at an international event like this [before this year] was fourth place. This is something that’s unprecedented, so I’m pretty sure that they are super excited. Also, this entire performance has been a very dominant one for us, so we are very proud, and we think that all the fans should be ecstatic.
For the first time in CoD Mobile esports history, China and Wolves are on top of the worldBLIX: For you to have been able to win this tournament after a long road from last year, how much does this victory mean to you specifically?
Anzai: Back in China, for a long time, I’ve been a player on PC for CoD and people thought I was a cheater, and because of that, I thought to myself, ‘Maybe I should play mobile and try to be a professional’ and it worked out for me. And for the past few years, I’ve proved myself in domestic competitions and we won a lot, but it was never in an international opportunity that I was able to prove myself like this and I’m just really proud to be able to have this result at this stage.
BLIX: Looking to the future now, what’s going to be the goal for you and the team?
Anzai: We want to take it one step at a time and we want to keep refining our game and keep focusing on improving. There’s going to be another CDM tournament in China and we hope to win that and everything else is going to follow as we keep pushing forward steadily.
