Brazilian eSports athlete Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo, 33, has gained international fame with his unique ability to kill enemies. With weapons of various calibers, especially a powerful AWP (Arctic Warfare Police) sniper rifle, he has claimed exactly 34,070 victims so far, according to official counts.
Away from the computer screens, however, the Professor, as he is also known, confesses that his passions are different. He prefers, for example, chess (which he also practices) to picking up a real gun. “I’m not particularly a fan of weapons, I don’t have weapons and I don’t intend to have weapons,” he said, but without criticizing those who like them.
FalleN began his career in electronic games as a teenager in the interior of SP and managed to gain recognition that every athlete craves: he is seen, in full activity, as an eSports legend and has the status of the greatest Brazilian CS (Counter-Strike) player. .
Counter-Strike is one of the most popular first-person shooter franchises in the world. It simulates tactical and strategic combat between two teams made up of terrorists and counter-terrorists. In classic mode, the first ones try to explode a bomb, and the second ones try to stop them.
The biggest championship in the category is known as the Major. Toledo already has two of them on the shelf and, this Saturday (30), a new battle begins in Shanghai (China) to take the third trophy as captain of Furia, a team also formed by Brazilians Yuurih, Kscerato, Chelo and Skullz. Sidde is the current coach.
This could be the last Major of FalleN’s career. A victory could lead to his retirement, a decision that will take place in the second half of 2025, when his contract with the current team ends. Toledo’s conquest could also lead to the retirement of another eSports icon, narrator Alexandre Borba Chiqueta, the Gaul, as one of the biggest streamers in the world joked.
“Gaules said he will retire when we [brasileiros] win a major? So, I’ll have the chance to retire Gaules next month, God willing. It would be great, right? [risos]”, he jokes.
Toledo falou to Sheet interview earlier this month. At the time, the player was in Malta, where the Furia team is based. In the conversation, he spoke about politics, the end of his career, his time in the Army and his vision of eSports in Brazil.
Read the main excerpts from the interview below.
In real life, are you also a good shot? How was your performance in the Army?
[O Exército] It was a fantastic experience, there were a hundred people who were divided into two blocks there at the war shooting. It was an experience I would do again. If you said: ‘Wow, would you experience this again in your next life?’ I think I would enlist first time.
So I had some experience [com armas]but it was very small. It wasn’t even possible to go too deep into it. I’m not particularly a fan of weapons, I don’t have weapons and I have no intention of having weapons. I understand the need, I understand other points of view from those who want to have it, I understand that there are people who want to feel safer. Like everything in life, there is a good side and a bad side, right? There are many bad things that happen with weapons that could be avoided, but we know that the world is not a fairy tale either, right? We will always have arguments on both sides. I think everyone has to do what they think is right for their own lives.
Gaules jokes that he will retire when the Brazilians win a Major. Do you think you can retire it this year?
Did Gaules say he’s going to retire when we win a Major? So I’ll have the chance to retire Gaules next month, God willing. It would be great, right? [risos] So, I feel that our team is making great strides in terms of evolution. We are not yet competing as favorites when we enter the tournament, but we are already starting to appear there, which for us is already a big improvement. We hope to soon be able to fight for these titles. It would be beautiful, right? In 2016, when we won our first tournament, we were also in the same situation. So, you don’t necessarily need to be a favorite to win. I hope we retire Gaules next month. Let’s do the most we can for this.
What is your relationship with Gaules currently?
We have a very old history. It started with us competing against each other. Then it became us working on projects together. After that, it ended up that Gaules had some turning points in his life there and started streaming, right? And it ended up becoming the main broadcaster of CS games, let’s say, in Brazil.
I believe that the message that his stream sent when he watched Brazil’s games was a very positive message, a somewhat nationalist message, but in the sense of pushing the Brazilian fans. I think that like every project, everything changes a little. It was difficult to sustain just that side for a long time. They are also content creators. When the material for the content is not so positive, it is difficult to maintain this heightened positivity. It’s easy to root for whoever wins, right? But when you’re taking a lot on your plate and losing it, sometimes content creation has to come the other way too. Then, often, this other side ends up not being as pleasing and also ends up giving space for some “trolls” to have more participation and end up distilling a bit of “hate”. So I, on the other side, sometimes end up receiving a little from this other side. I can say that I’m still a big fan of their work, I think they work really well, but as a player we end up taking some hits that we have to know how to manage. But we are still very close. I think that as close as we were, we continue to be as close as possible.
Online matches, including CS, are marked by a toxic scenario, with racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic speech. How to deal with this?
Yes, toxicity in lobbies, in online meetings, especially between people who don’t know each other, is still a problem and I think it will always be, to be quite honest, because the internet as a whole gives this feeling of great anonymity. Sometimes the game is used as an escape from things. He [jogador] He wants that pleasure of winning a game to escape what he’s going through in his life there. I think that a lot of times people start playing without a very defined purpose and go on autopilot a lot. Then, we will see a lot of frustrations being spread.
There are some profiles of people who come to play. There are those guys who come in to play and are very focused on being better. Sometimes they don’t really know how to do this and they get frustrated because they blame their lack of success on their teammates.
I believe the best way to escape this for a bit is to try to make friends. In these lobbies, there will be one or two people with whom you connect well too, because it’s not just negativity. There will be that guy who made good plays with you, there will be that guy who had a nice chat with you, with that girl and such.
The game for the game’s sake, it gives room for a lot of things, including “trolls”. That’s it, for those who are there in this interview and play games: try to choose with which mentality you will enter a game the next time you play. You will see that the experience is completely different.
Do you consider eSport as a sport?
I believe you can look at this discussion in two ways. The first is that when we compare the physical part with other sports, in fact, the physical part on the computer will not be latent, right? The guy isn’t wasting energy, he’s sedentary, he’s not burning any calories and so on. And I can understand the arguments in this way.
But then it falls, on the other hand, when we start to accept chess as a sport too. If chess is a sport and is already accepted, and he is also sitting in a chair, same thing, right? The second point is that sport inspires people to want to be equal or to use it as motivation in their lives. I believe that electronic sports does this too. So, I think everyone can choose what they want on this subject. This is my opinion. If there is an ecosystem, if there are people to watch and there is an intention to be better than the other, it is a sport.
Do you make more money today as a player or as a businessman?
I still live more from my work than anything else, right? Within my company, I basically, in all these years, did not withdraw any money, everything that happens within Fallen Company we reinvest, we create new things. Obviously it’s a way for my family to survive too, all my brothers work there, my mother, so it’s a family thing like that, but I’ve literally never personally used any dollars from there for my personal purposes.
There was a phone call from Bolsonaro to you that became controversial. Do you have a political position?
Look, to be quite honest, from a political point of view, I really don’t have much to say. But, like any young person, we often end up receiving a lot of information, from social media, from outside, and sometimes we find it very easy to believe that we know everything about something and think that that is the way. So I won’t deny that I was a bit of a victim of this too. I went through a phase like that, when I was even younger, and then I became a little more aware that it wasn’t quite like that. So, I’ve been through this a little.
In relation to the connections you mentioned, for example, the call from Jair Bolsonaro, I am aware that when someone of that size calls you, regardless of whether it is Bolsonaro, whether it is Lula, whether it is Marçal, no matter who it is, I have the conception that there are interests behind this connection, I will not deny. Obviously if someone is calling, there are reasons why they are calling. I know deep down that this may exist, but I don’t really like living my life trying too hard to imagine what the other person is doing. For me, it’s a reason for great gratification, whether Bolsonaro, Lula, whoever it is, it’s a cool position. So, I would answer any call, whether from Bolsonaro, Lula, or any president of Brazil, with the greatest pride, because as far as I can help, what I can say, I am available to contribute.
