Malady on his conflict with Watson: “I told the coach, ‘Find a replacement for the next tour; I’m not playing with him.’”
Team Yandex players Alimzhan “watson” Islambekov and Arman “Malady” Orazbaev spoke with OFFSTAGE about their preparations for The International 2026, an unproductive boot camp before the tournament, their relationships with one another, and conflicts during matches.
On the group stage of The International 2026
Malady: We’re feeling great. With God’s help, we barely made it out of the group stage. Right, Alim?
watson: We ended up in a really tough group. [Did you put a lot of effort into preparation?] All of it. We had a boot camp. I wouldn’t say it was the most productive one. We tried to fix the mistakes we made at EWC, but we ended up making new ones. We tried to fix those, too.
About the boot camp
[Why was the boot camp, unfortunately, unproductive?]
Malady: Because we were trying to come up with new strategies. There were so many that they all turned out to be crap. And nothing worked. We tried playing with Io, we tried playing with Largo, we tried playing with Lina. And nothing just worked out. So besides that, what else? A lot of people dropped in rank at bootcamp. Right, bro? [Arman addresses watson. — Ed.]
watson: There was a reset, after all.
Malady: Yeah, and even after the reset. When you’re playing and you feel like you can’t even win regular pub games, you end up feeling bad during official matches or qualifiers. It’s like you have no confidence. [But it seems like you guys put too much pressure on yourselves, right?] Yeah, I think so.
On watson and Malady’s dynamic in real life
[From the outside, it seems like you two are practically brothers, always together. Is it actually different in real life? Do you hang out outside of Dota 2?]
Malady: What do you say? Look, watch what you say.
watson: Usually, we don’t see each other after tournaments. We just take a break from each other for a week or two. Well, then we might meet up somewhere. If we’re going somewhere, we’ll go eat there together. Plus, we have friends there, too. But we rarely go out. [How rarely?] We’ve probably gone out to eat once. [In all this time?] Yeah, “Ryb Pila” [a seafood restaurant in Astana—Ed.]. That’s about once a month, if you count it that way. Well, once a month, I guess.
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Malady: Basically, we have boot camps and tournaments—those happen consistently once a month. And we’re not home for about 20 days a month. Well, let’s put it this way: I see this person for about 20 days. [You still live together, right?] Well, sometimes. If we’re lucky, we don’t. When we fly home, I just hate him. I don’t want to see him anymore. Because all those 20 days together with him, you know? It really gets to you, too.
watson: What? I’m totally friendly.
Malady: Anyway, when we fly home, we say to each other, “Okay, I don’t want to see your *** [face], let’s take a break from each other and then we’ll go to boot camp.”
On Conflicts During the Game
[By the way, how do you guys think this might affect the game itself if you’re constantly together, 24/7, as friends? Or, on the contrary, could it be a plus?]
watson: Well, I think it’s a plus. If he’s ruining the game, I can just tell him right away, “Why are you ruining it?” Or we can discuss the strategy. Because some people, well, don’t speak up right away—it just causes problems. Once, well, he might tell me. We had this one time where, well, I messed up. He started yelling at me.
Malady: Not yelling, just raising his voice.
watson: Okay, okay. He raised his voice at me really loudly. Right in the middle of the game. I started raising my voice back at him. There was a timeout. The coach started calming us down, we came out of the timeout, and started playing again. And the guys—our guys, all three of them—were just sitting there in shock. Wondering what was going on between us on the field. And after that, we had a session with a psychologist. It lasted about four hours. [With the whole team?] The whole team.
Malady: As for the rest of them—we don’t know. Well, the story didn’t end there. As soon as that game was over, I immediately canceled the next qualifiers. And I told the coach, “Find a replacement for the next round; I’m not playing with him.” And then a day later, we’re back on the line and best friends again. [That was during a KV match, right?] Yeah. [Who were you playing against?] Against NAVI. It’s a good thing they’re not here. Otherwise, they would’ve crushed us just the same.
Earlier, Team Falcons mid laner Stanislav “Malr1ne” Potorak spoke about the team’s coach, Curtis Daniel “Aui_2000” Lee, in an interview with OFFSTAGE: “To me, he’s probably the smartest Dota player out there, because this guy just sees Dota differently.”
Photo — Valve.
