Paper Rex has bolstered its VALORANT roster with the addition of Russian up-and-coming pro Ilya “something” Petrov today.
The 21-year-old will join the rest of his teammates in Seoul, South Korea “as soon as possible,” according to independent journalist Max Katz, where the VCT Pacific League will kick off on Saturday, March 25. With the arrival of the new blood, Paper Rex now has seven players on its roster: Benedict “Benkai” Tan, Patiphan “CigaretteS” Porsi, Aaron “mindfreak” Leonhart, Wang “Jinggg” Jing Jie, Jason “f0rsakeN” Susanto, Khalish “d4v41” Rusyaidee, and something.
Paper Rex played at VCT LOCK//IN São Paulo, the inaugural VCT event of the year, and were eliminated at the hands of Cloud9 in the first round of Group Alpha. Benkai, f0rsakeN, mindfreak, Jinggg, and d4v41 were the players who competed in that series, while CigaretteS was just a backup option for the squad.
It’s possible that Paper Rex wanted to add a new player in case the team also doesn’t do well in the VCT Pacific League and saw something as a player who is capable of holding his own against tier-one teams, despite his lack of experience at that level.
The 21-year-old, however, was posting impressive numbers on Sengoku, his latest team. Something was arguably the best player in the Japan Challengers League Split One, which lasted from January to March. He averaged the highest rating in the tournament (1.42), the highest ACS (305), K/D (1.65), ADR (194.8), and kills per round (1.09), according to VLR.gg’s statistics. Meanwhile, most of his teammates had far more honest numbers and Sengoku finished in fourth place.
Something mains mainly Reyna and Jett but occasionally plays with Raze too. Given all that he was doing on Sengoku, he could become one of Paper Rex’s duelists in the future if the team doesn’t perform well in the VCT Pacific League.
Paper Rex will face DetonatioN FocusMe on Sunday, March 26 at 4am CT in their VCT Pacific League debut.
