After winning $400,000 with his team, Denial eSports, James Clayton “Clayster” Eubanks was named the first MVP of the Call of Duty World Championship. As he walked away from the flashy light show and falling confetti, we caught a moment of his time before he was whisked away for celebrations.
“It is still a surreal feeling right now,” Clayster said, still somewhat in a daze. “I am sure later tonight maybe tomorrow morning when I wake up it will finally set in, but right now it’s still kinda like I am in a dream land.”
Clayster said the darkest moment of the final series against Team Revenge was in round two of the championship match. They loaded up into Drift, one of the new DLC maps for a game of Search and Destroy. With cyclone-like speed, Team Revenge scored six straight wins ending the round 6-0. Clayton responded “That’s one of our better maps, and to get 0-6’d by them, it was kinda demoralizing for us. We just knew we had to bounce back one way or another.”
Denial may have been a bit overconfident going into the match, as they had already beaten Team Revenge earlier that day. But Clayster said the team knew what it had to do. “I’ve been in that situation in the past two tournaments,” he said. “Coming from the losers bracket getting all the way to the grand finals and having to win two best of fives, and the pressure is so immense, especially on this stage, the biggest stage of them all. I’m sure they were feeling the pressure and I didn’t think there was any real chance we could have lost”
When asked what he plans to do with his share of the winnings, Clayster said “There is going to be a lot of saving. There is going to be a lot of paying of some student loan debts, and maybe a new car here or there.”
