Wonder of many tournaments. History of Donovan Tekkz Hunt’s Success .
The schoolboy who plays football with Kaka, scores penalties under the supervision of Steven Gerrard and Peter Moore is waiting for him in Liverpool.
When young Donovan landed in Atlanta, he was kept in the airport for nearly four hours in passport control. The knob heads from the border service could not understand the reason a 17 y.o. boy is visiting the USA. They just couldn’t pack in their heads that Donovan was taking part in the FIFA 2019 tournament and furthermore he’ll defend the title of champion. A few days later, the young player raised the FUT Champions Cup trophy ELEAGUE over his head – the fifth in his career. And that was just the beginning.
Donovan jokes that he started playing computer football earlier than some kids start playing real football. He first tried playing when he was five, but his real talent showed nine years later. Until then he has beaten his friends’ asses or just played with his game on the console. He never thought about tournaments, but everything changed with Weekend League (weekly league, giving everyone a chance to compete for quotas in official tournaments from the developer).
“When the Weekend League appeared on 40 games, I began to play against professional players, about whom I had heard something before. Sometimes I even beat them. I thought I was lucky, or that they just played skin deep. ”Donovan said.
With the intention to check his skills he took part in the first next tournament he found and won. After that was another tournament and another victory. They didn’t bring him money, but they sure lifted his self-esteem. Dreaming of becoming a professional cybersportsman, he convinced his parents to move to a bigger town, where the internet was more stable, but not all of the family members were right behind him.
“My parents had very different opinions on FIFA. Dad didn’t even know much about it, he knew that I was good at it of course, but didn’t seem to be interested. My mom was the opposite, she supported me all the time, and wanted to know more about the game. She helped me a lot!” says Donovan.
His mom was the person saving his ass from other family members, while on the weekends he played Weekend league and other tournaments, gaining skills. When in February 2018, Donovan made his way to his first major LAN final of FUT Champions Barcelona, his father answered shortly: “Oh, cool”.
Viewers of the Barcelona Tournament knew nothing at all about the young player so they gave him the lowest sowing and in his first game, he met with Kurt Fenecom, who was the favorite of the whole championship. For Donovan, this was the perfect opportunity to understand for himself if he has the balls to play offline as well. He lost that match but understood that he can compete with the best. Now that’s an attitude everyone should have towards mistakes and failures. Later on, they’ll meet again and Donovan will kick his ass with the 5:1 score.
While other cybersportsmen were getting ready for the next games, Donovan was with his mother, telling her more about the game and tactics. He also promised her, that he’ll buy her a vacation to San Francisco, which she dreamed about.
The play-off day was different. Donovan was now certain that he can pull it trough. As luck would have it, his phone died and he couldn’t contact his mom. Match after match Tekkz passed on the grid, playing almost without interruption. Just before the final, where he was about to meet with the best player on the Playstation 4, Donovan found the opportunity to put the phone on charge.
“When I turned on my phone it was literally pouring out notifications! I had 30k followers on twitter and last time I checked in the morning there were not more than 600!”
A few hours later he was standing on the stage, clumsily raising the cup over his head and shaking it like a bottle of champagne before running the cork in the ceiling. On the huge screen behind him is his photo and the words “Champion”. Around photographers, fans and cameras. An ordinary schoolboy from the UK, who will need to go to school on Monday. And now a picture of a 16-year-old guy in a red scarf with a trophy at the ready has flown all social networks. Donovan himself could not sleep either on the day of victory or on the plane on his way home. He went to Barca as a noname and came back as a champ.
On his way home, he decided to clean up his social media and add up a business e-mail. The number of offers was huge, cooperation, sponsorship, contracts, offers to visit the offices of organizations and participate in tournaments. Donovan rejected them all. He was not interested in this.
The thing that caught his attention was a tweet from F2. As he was watching them on YouTube, he was very interested. F2 Freestylers, Billy Wingrow, and Jeremy Lynch, famous football freestylers, were leading a YouTube channel collecting millions of views. Now they were going to start their way into eSports. Of course, with a player in FIFA is a nice start. And surely they would not mind starting their team with a young champion, who became famous not only for his skill but also for his endless feints in the game.
On April the 8th, among the messages from his sponsors, he found a letter with an attached video. He, who was a longtime Liverpool fan, was greeted by Steven Gerrard himself!
“I just stared at the video and could not say a word. I was like, “What? Is this Gerrard greeting me now? ” Donovan wondered. In a couple of weeks, he will stand with his idol on a football field and will score a penalty under his leadership.
But cybersportsman’s life in FIFA is not just meeting with football players and shooting videos for YouTube channels. After winning Barcelona, Donovan went to the next championship series in Manchester. But despite the excellent results online, it couldn’t rise above 17th place. Donovan himself is sure that he simply was not lucky in one match, and then everything started. Then fans began to call him a one tournament player. A boy who just got lucky. The reputation was spoiled, and comments on YouTube videos were replete with the phrases “One tournament wonder”. He didn’t know what was worse the offenses or the way the fans began to doubt his skill.
When FIFA 19 came out, Donovan was serious about convincing skeptics. He spent on training 12 hours a day, sitting down at the console immediately after classes in college and going to bed after midnight. He took part in the first Weekend League immediately after its start and became the first to play 30-0 in FIFA 19. For 4 weeks of October in the League, he lost just one match, and at the same time shared a video about how he drew his opponents with one hand. Following this, he also effortlessly passed qualifications for FUT Champions tournaments.
In Bucharest in December 2018, Donovan came as a favorite. He occupied the first line of the rating on the Xbox, several times climbed to the top of the Weekend League and drove crazy with his technique. But, remembering his failure in Manchester, the skeptics expected that the young man would be nervous again and would overestimate his strength. When Donovan won this tournament, he tweeted his photos with the cup and signed with one badass phrase: “One tournament wonder.”
A few days later he won the PGL Cup, becoming the first player to earn two FIFA championship titles in a week. And in another 7 days, Donovan was in the top 4 of the next FUT Champions Cup 2018 tournament in London. Already in February, FIFA eClub World Cup 2019 was won, and then he brought his next cup with the FUT Champions Cup ELEAGUE, becoming the first triple champion in history. Msdossary, Gorilla, Megabit – everyone lost to him. Famous players and cybersportsmen congratulated Hunt on Twitter victories.
At the next tournament in Singapore, Donovan came as the main favorite. Nobody calls him “the miracle of one tournament” anymore, the audience comes to see exactly his game, and rivals are afraid of even training with a young guy. And few people think that the real career of the young man began just a year ago with a similar tournament in Barcelona, where he burst onto the professional stage almost from nowhere.
And last but not least at a meeting with fans before the match against Bayern, Peter Moore, Liverpool CEO, was asked about the future of the club in eSports.“I’m a big Tekkz fan. And as soon as possible, I want to see him play in a Liverpool t-shirt. ”
Donovan Hunt is a perfect example of “if you want it you can get it”. We sure hope he bought his mom the dream trip to San Francisco.
