Another player that built up experience in the UK League of Legends scene has made his way to the European top tier in the LEC.
20-year-old Bulgarian ADC player Nihat ‘Innaxe’ Aliev has been called up to Schalke’s first team in the LEC, after helping their academy team reach first place in the German Prime League this split so far.
Innaxe will fill in for Schalke’s experienced main ADC Konstantinos-Napoleon ‘Forg1ven’ Tzortziou, who stepped down after snubbing his teammates on social media.
Schalke has had a bad start to the LEC spring 2020 season, losing their first games and sitting bottom of the standings. Following this, Forg1ven made a post on social media announcing his decision to step down.
Schalke then announced its plan to give Innaxe a shot, saying he’s ready for the LEC.
He will play against Rogue and current LEC leaders G2 this weekend.
Innaxe, just like Lurox, has been a crucial part of our 7-0 winning spree in #PrimeLeague, and participated at Worlds 2019 Play-In Playoffs with Unicorns of Love.
— Schalke 04 Esports (@S04Esports) February 13, 2020
He’s been consistently improving in the European Regional Leagues, and we consider him ready for #LEC. pic.twitter.com/YSqCLuqzvM
Innaxe said: “I hope you watch LEC this weekend because it’s my debut. I’m really excited to play, obviously, it’s been six years of playing League of Legends since I started in gold. I just hope you watch.”
He also tweeted saying “mom I made it”.
Innaxe played in the UK League of Legends scene for several years, on teams such as Newcastle Jaguars, Sensei, Xenex and Excel, whom he won the old ESL Premiership with.
He joins other players in the LEC that plied their trade in UK League of Legends, including Caedrel, Alphari, Maxlore, Larssen, Kasing and more.
Also, Innaxe played in the Worlds play-ins stage with Unicorns of Love late last year. He was previously known as Innaxe the Dog Innaxe the God.
You can check out this interview we conducted with Innaxe and his former bot lane partner (and now UKLC caster) Aux, when they were playing at Excel Esports together back in 2017:
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
