From zero to almost heroes, it’s been a wild ride for the German Mid Laner.
Twisted Minds’ Hailang considers 2025 to be a success despite falling short of reaching a podium finish twice in international tournaments this year. Their fourth and fifth place finishes at EWC 2025 and KIC 2025 respectively has put the team on the map. Not bad for a team that was only formed this year.
For Martin “Hailang” Raza, this isn’t his first international rodeo but the leap in results is certainly surprising for him. He and most of Twisted Minds previously played for Team Vitality and the most they could do was an early exit in playoffs. Now they’re beating Malaysian teams and even he can’t explain it.
“I didn’t think that we could play this well because the team was built just this year,” said Twisted Minds’ Hailang. “Before, when most of us were in Team Vitality, we didn’t really play very well. This year we thought to ourselves ‘maybe this time we can win’ but we really didn’t know. So we’re very happy with how this year turned out.”
But even with the massive growth they’ve made this year, Hailang knows that they can’t stop here. They’re not the only global team that’s improved this year, as evidenced by Blacklist International KIC 2025 results. He’s a little disappointed that they couldn’t replicate their EWC run but that just shows how much they still need to do.
“I think other teams are always improving, getting better and better,” said Twisted Minds’ Hailang. “We didn’t improve as much because it’s hard to get the same quality of training in Europe. Other teams get to train against Chinese teams but we don’t really have a chance to do that. It’s something we have to try to do for next year.”
With that being said, Twisted Minds have shown that they’ve got the potential to be world contenders. HoK global esports is still young, but Hailang is confident that they’ve got what it takes to not just challenge the ones on top.
“I think if you give us two or three years, we can take on a KPL [Chinese] team.”
We certainly can’t wait to see him and other global teams reach that point.
Banner photo from Esports World Cup.