By Karina Ziminaite

There have been rumors about the possible retirement of Origen’s owner and mid laner Enrique 'xPeke' Cedeño Martínez for quite a while now. On Friday evening the team announced in its statement that there is indeed PowerOfEvil beingadded to the roster. Despite the fact, that PowerOfEvil will play for Origen at IEM San Jose later this month, xPeke says, that he will be still actively involved with the team and fans will see him on the LCS stage. 

SPORT1: Since when were you considering PowerOfEvil for the mid lane position? When did he catch your eye?

xPeke: It happened after Worlds. I went for a week of holiday and started to think about having a substitute player for IEM San Jose. I could not play for almost two weeks. I was asking everyone on the team and they said it did not really matter, who we get, because it was supposed to be just for IEM. I think Niels asked me, if it’s going to be the sub for the whole year or just IEM.

Then I started to think that it might be a good idea to have similar solution as SK Telecom T1, where they have Easyhoon and Faker but they both practice every day.

In our case, I would play only when I am committed to the game and when I’m not I could take a break. I started looking for available mid laners and remembered recent interview with PowerOfEvil. I asked him on Skype, if he was not contracted yet. He said he wasn’t. That’s how it all happened just last week.

SPORT1: You know each other from the LCS, what do you think about him as a person and as a player?

xPeke: We would just say ‘hello’ and ‘bye’ to each other, we did not really know each other well. Now he is with us for two days already. I like him. Of course, he is does not feel that open with us as we are with each other after a year together but we get along well and he is fine with our stupid jokes. I think we are going to be a good fit.

Even though Unicorns of Love had completely different style to ours, PowerOfEvil always seemed to be more methodical than the most of his team. He was always good in his lane, he had lane pressure, he never had a game where you could say he was really bad or lost it. Most of the times he was more than just decent, he was carrying alone. I was impressed by his performance. 

SPORT1: There is just a week left till IEM San Jose, do you think it is going to be enough time for PowerOfEvil to adapt and perform on stage?

xPeke: It will go as it goes. I spoke to PowerOfEvil and I told him not to worry about IEM San Jose too much, I did not want to put much pressure on him. This tournament is important, it would be great to win it, especially with a new player. It would be a great opportunity for him to show that he deserves this position but at the same time it does not matter too much. The team will go there after playing ten days together so it probably will not show the full potential.

It will depend on how much we can do in upcoming week. We will see how fast PowerOfEvil can adapt, right now he is more quiet, which is normal when you have just joined new team. Anyway our main focus is for the next year and the LCS. 

SPORT1: What about the coach, after Hermit left you do not have one?

xPeke: It is still undecided. It is hard to find a suitable coach for us. Hermit went back to North America after Worlds because that is where he lives and we really did not have time to talk about it yet. For IEM San Jose there is no requirement to have a coach. Hermit helped us but he is not really fitting into coach position, he is more of an analyst. Right now one can say we are self-coaching but we are going to figure out this question soon.