biguzera on BLAST Bounty Summer 2026: “We made it to the playoffs and should be proud, but that’s not enough.”
paiN Gaming captain Rodrigo “biguzera” Bittencourt, in an interview at BLAST Bounty Summer 2026, shared his thoughts after being eliminated from the championship, discussed the challenges faced during their match against Astralis, summed up the tournament for the team, and spoke about the roster’s immediate plans.
On his feelings after being eliminated from the event
To be honest, losses like this are really hard to take, especially when you’re the captain. I’m incredibly exhausted; I complained of a severe headache throughout the entire series—I don’t even know what happened. It was hard for me to perform individually, but I fulfilled my IGL duties well. My teammates kept telling me that and praised me for my calls. It’s just that in some rounds we were too nervous, there was too much communication at times, and we got punished for it—that’s all.
On the team’s struggles in the match against Astralis
When we face tough matches like this, when we’re losing and things aren’t going according to plan, we often start to lose confidence. And without that confidence, it’s extremely hard to come back from a deficit. We were the favorites going in, but it turned out the way it did. I find it hard to pinpoint the exact reasons for this result right now; we’ll need to analyze the match in more detail to do that.
On the tournament results and future plans
Of course, we made it to the playoffs and should be proud, but that’s not enough. The performance we put on was far from our best. We need to improve and make fewer mistakes. There were far too many of them today—I could feel it even during the match. Now we’ll head back home to Brazil, stay there for about five days, and then get back to competing—the Esports World Cup awaits us.
Yesterday, paiN Gaming lost to Astralis in the quarterfinal match at BLAST Bounty 2026 Season 2 in a best-of-3 series with a 1–2 map score and were eliminated from the tournament, finishing in 5th–8th place and earning a total of $51,250 in prize money.
