SSG Ambition Interview: Worlds 2017 Day 6

Hey there everyone, welcome to our Worlds 2017 Interview Series. As you may know, we have partnered with Travis Gafford and supported his trip to China to cover the games and get insights from the players. We will be sharing the interviews here along with their transcriptions. Enjoy!

Travis: Day 2 of Week 2 is all wrapped up and we now know that Samsung is making it out of Groups. I’m here with Ambition as well as Shirley who’s going to help translate. Ambition, a lot of people expect Koreans seems to always make it out in the first seed. Unfortunately, you weren’t able to do that today, why do you think that is?

Ambition: In my opinion, all Chinese teams are great enough to beat Korean teams in any game. However, regarding today’s game and yesterday’s game vs RNG, we’re not prepared perfectly against them. We made a huge blunder and that led to the loss of the two games.

Travis: What do you think your chances are in the next week? You’ll be moving on to quarterfinals, you’ll be facing first seed teams. What do you think your chances are?

Ambition: In my opinion, if all Korean teams now are the first seed into the next round then I think it will still be a bit difficult, and if that’s not the case there will be other strong teams including TSM, therefore the chances are 50-50. No matter what team we fight against, it will be a very difficult journey so we just have no choice but to try our best.

Travis: Now you have been playing for quite some time. I remember interviewing you many, many, many years ago. What is it like for you to be at this World Championship and sort of see the progress of international competition over the years?

Ambition: As I see the international stage and competitions scale up, I wish that only if I was a little bit younger, I could play it for longer. But on the other hand, because I was here from the very first phase, I’m very confident about that and I try to do my best to continue to be here with other players.

Travis: Is it fun for you to see any of the familiar faces that have been competing for as long as you have?

Ambition: Well yes, there are a lot of familiar faces that I’m happy to see because I was here from the very first World series, I know a lot of them. But one by one they left the stage, there are only a few left that I know. I cheer for them and really feel great to see. But on the other hand, I really respect that they survived out of such fierce competition.

Travis: Is there anything that you would like to say to any of your Western fans who have been watching you for so long and maybe are still cheering you on at this event?

Ambition: Well, first of all, I’m sorry I’m not really fluent in English so I can’t speak to you in English, but I believe there are a lot of fans cheering for me so I really appreciate it. In order to pay you back for that, I’ll do my best to bring you more great performances.

Thanks for reading/watching! For more Worlds coverage, you can see more interviews here, or at Travis’s Youtube channel.