The 2nd day for 2018 All-Star Las Vegas took place on December 7th; even more numbers of fans came to visit on the 2nd day than they did on the 1st day. We had the chance to interview Jun-Sik ‘Bang’ Bae, who received a lot of attention from his fans with his Xayah cosplay on the 1st day of the event. 

Following is the video of the interview where Bang talk about his Xayah cosplay, what he talked about with Sneaky, and his message for his NA fans!

This is your first time playing in All-Star tournament. How did you feel after playing on the stage?

I’ve played in about 3 matches, and it is just fun. It’s been a while since I could play in a tournament laughing like this.

We can't leave out your encounter with Sneaky. It has gotten a lot of attention since the fan votes. What did you actually talk about when you got to finally meet him in person?

We talked about ordinary things. What I remember is that Sneaky plays Lost Ark. I’ve played that game for 3 days and quit, but Sneaky says he’s still playing it. What surprised me was that he was playing the same server as I did with the same character. The Devil Hunter is a bit similar to Lucian, and when I heard Sneaky picked Devil Hunter, too, we had a conversation like, ‘You know, ADC…’.

You’ve played with Sneaky as well. How was the team sync?

Ah, I just didn’t understand why they would use Flash in a weird direction during a Tandem match. But when I got to play it myself, we would do that, too (use the Flash to a wrong place).

You will be playing in the NA LCS for the next season. If there’s a player you’d like to meet the most, who would that be?

Aphromoo. He is my support so I’m looking forward to meeting him the most. I would like to meet him as soon as possible and talk and play games together since he is someone I need to stay close the most and work on synchronizing a lot.  

There was a picture of you with the CEO of 100 Thieves posted on the social media. You must have had the chance to talk with him a lot; is there any anecdote you can share?

I’ve heard things like stories about the team and clothes. We talked about a lot of things, and the thing that I remember the most is that… I really like clothes. I like looking at them, too. He said things like, they are really good at making clothes, and they will make anything I want. He also seemed to have a lot of interest in clothes and he was friendly. I didn’t imagine it to be like this but he seems like a friendly ‘hyung’.

The letter, ‘도둑들’ (‘Thieves’ in Korean), written on the 100 Thieves Winter Collection gained a lot of attention within the League of Legends community. What was your feedback on it?

It kind of feels awkward when there’s Korean written on your clothes in Korea. So I told (the CEO) that ‘This is a bit awkward’ and he seemed very sad about it. So I explained why it seemed awkward; when you have Chinese, Japanese, or Korean written on your clothes, people in the West tend to think it’s cool, while it looks cool when you have English written on your clothes in Korea. So it seems that there’s this kind of difference… I think we talked about things like this.

We can’t leave out your Xayah cosplay, which got the most attention in this year’s All-Star event. Can you tell us how you felt about it?

Actually, all I did was just wear the costume. There were so many people who helped me prepare the costume, and it must have been really hard. I was sorry that I couldn’t really portray it perfectly although they’ve tried so hard, and it would have been very difficult if I had to prepare it all by myself. That is why I would like to thank everyone who helped me and I plan to reward them personally.

It was really fun. People would, like, look at me… (After changing into the costume) I was walking outside my hotel to catch a taxi and people passing by would put their thumbs up… It felt a bit thrilling when everyone was looking at me. It was a bit too much of attention.

If there’s another chance to cosplay next time, what champion would you like to cosplay?

Uh, I don’t want to think about it right now… But if there’s a chance, I think I might try one more time. It was more fun than I thought. If possible, I’d like to cosplay a male champion next time.

You lost in a card picking bet with your All-Star teammates. You had to pay for everyone’s dinner all by yourself; how did you feel about it back then?

I was a bit upset thinking the price would be very high but I had to pay much lesser than I expected. So I felt good again.

After you left SKT T1 and began your personal stream, you got a new nickname, ‘unsealed blabbermouth’.

In fact, what the fans know about the pro gamers, or, the memories of the times I played, is just 10% of what it really is like. I will do my best so that I can show them at least 50% of it in the future. Please come and watch my stream.

I heard that you’ve been studying English now and then as in preparation for your stay in NA. You’ll be using English often from now on, was there any difficulties you had using it?

It’s hard. There are parts I find hard because it is my second language… An English speaking fan left a comment that says, ‘You can’t learn to swim without going into the water first. You can come and learn here.’ on my social media account. I think they were right. People around me would say things like, ‘Language is something you adapt to, not learn’ a lot… So I thought my English would gradually improve as I played in NA.

But still, I thought I should know about the grammatical parts if I want to think of the sentences I want to say and speak so I’ve been looking at my high school grammar textbook again. It’s fun.

This will be the last match you are playing with Faker. Would you like to say anything to him?

Faker told me that the next time we meet, he will wipe me out…. I hope we get to meet as well. It will be so fun whatever tournament we play in. If I were to still say it in the interview… 'Let’s meet again?'(Laughs)

Lastly, any message for your NA fans who will be waiting for you?

Um, I’d like to say some serious things. For more precision, I’ll say it in Korean (instead of English). I am very happy that I get to go to NA. Since I’ll be going there to get a better career and be a better player, I hope you look forward to it very much, and the team that gave me certainty in my goal was 100 Thieves so I hope you would give us a lot of support. It’s a great team.