Liko plays for Brasil Gaming House and Team Brazil.  When I first spoke to him, BGH was fresh off their victory from PaiN Gaming in Contenders SA Quarterfinals.  At the time, I asked how confident he was about his team winning Contenders South America.  He responded that since they have been the undisputed top team in the region for 2 years in a row, they were confident they would win.  And sure enough, they did: with a solid 4-0 over Isurus Gaming.

Given that the majority of Team Brazil is comprised of the BGH roster, their dominance hasn't gone unnoticed by international teams.  Mangachu of Team Canada has stated that Team Brazil could be the dark horse of the World Cup.  Coach Aero from Team USA has taken notice as well.  And it's the reason why many will be looking forward to this match.

Liko himself is an incredibly skilled DPS player, as Gesture has previously said he wanted to see him in OWL.  Contenders analyst Mukai also chose him as most likely to be picked for OWL.

How did you come up with your in-game name?

I honestly don't remember how I came up with my nickname, my closest thought is that i just mashed my keyboard and it makes sense since all the letters are close to each other.

How does your team like the current patch? Any thoughts on Wrecking Ball and/or the new Symmetra?

We like the current patch, but have just recently started messing around with Wrecking Ball. We don't really have much intention to explore Symmetra as we don't think it's ever worth it, unless we're cheesing very hard.

Is your team practicing together in a LAN/Gaming house? If so, what city?

No, we do not play from a gaming house, each in their own on 4 different cities of Brazil.

Do you have any specific practice techniques? Do you use any aim training programs like Aim Hero?

I honestly just play ranked to grind the game, I've never really played any aim grind games like Aim Hero.  Bad part is I am forced to play with 180 ping everyday when I play ranked because I cant find games in my region due to the lack of players above 3800 or so, so I play in NA East.

Have you received any offers from OWL after your Contenders SA victory?

I have not received any offers to OWL yet, however it is my dream to compete against the best and I work hard everyday to hopefully get noticed!

Regarding BeastJDL's tweet about Blizzard needing to improve Contenders SA, what in particular needs to change? Are there some things that you feel Blizzard has improved on already?

A lot has improved, especially since they decided to implement Contenders in South America and make the first step towards a more sustainable gig for people around here. Nevertheless - coming from the view of a player who got 1st place and the biggest piece of the cake last season, the prize pool is definitely something I feel like should be looked at.

We have the best viewership numbers after Korean and Chinese contenders, just recently HyperX partnered with Contenders SA for playoffs and still we have the smallest prize pool along with AUS and we dont even have LAN finals, which every single other region did.

How confident are you regarding Brazil's chances with the World Cup group stage? 

We know that the World Cup stage will be watched by everyone so we really want to give it our best and hope that we can show what we're worth. With that in mind, having the titans Canada and USA in the group makes the dream a lot harder, but we are hoping to have a good performance against them. We expect to be in the middle of the pack of the group, realistically.

Since most of the Team Brazil are from Brasil Gaming House, do you feel you have a synergy advantage?

I think that we definitely have the synergy advantage but we know that stronger teams might have gamesense advantage able to surpass that.

What are your thoughts on Hydration? He's playing for Team USA, but is he also a fair representation of Brazilian players?

Don't know Hydration enough to be able to call him my representative, because I think that having started in the NA scene since the beginning, while we were building our own scene in SA, is enough to make our realities much different. He is an excellent player and definitely deserves his spot on Gladiators and Team USA.

Do you have any thoughts about Mangachu saying Team Brazil could be the dark horse team?

It’s a huge honor to be regarded as a dark horse team by Mangachu, especially since he is in elite teams such as XL2 and Team Canada and his opinion has a lot of value. We believe we have a lot of potential and we hope we’re able to show it on stage!