Dragon Ranger Gaming (DRG) has announced the signing of Maximilian ‘Demon1’ Mazanov ahead of VALORANT Champions 2025 in Paris.
The 2023 VALORANT champion previously represented VCT Americas team Leviatán until he was benched in May.
Demon1 is most known for his Championship-winning run as the star duelist for Evil Geniuses (EG) in 2023. At the time, he had been picked up by the North American esports organisation as a rookie hailing from the now-disbanded sqn 2.0.
Before claiming the Champions trophy, Demon1 already showed promise at the 2023 Masters Tokyo event, where he and his team secured second place.
Following these early achievements, however, the duelist prodigy has struggled to live up to his full potential under the banners of NRG and later Leviatán. Demon1 has yet to win a regional trophy and has failed to qualify for an international VCT competition since 2023.
Who is Demon1’s New Team?
To the surprise of many in the VALORANT esports community, it is DRG that has provided Demon1 another shot at an international trophy.
The team has been competing in VCT China since winning the region’s Ascension tournament in 2023. Last year, DRG attended its first global event — Masters Shanghai — but was eliminated early.
This year, the dragons made an impressive underdog run during Stage 2, finishing in second place to qualify for VALORANT Champions 2025.
Interestingly, DRG is one of the Chinese teams that relies primarily on English communication due to a multi-national roster, including Russian sentinel expert Ilya ‘vo0kashu’ Ushakov. Therefore, Demon1 shouldn’t face major communication barriers within the roster.
DRG’s first match at VALORANT Champions 2025 will take place on September 14th against VCT Pacific’s third seed, T1.
While DRG confirmed in its Weibo announcement that Demon1 will join his new team in Paris, the player has not been added to Riot Games’ Global Contract Database so far.
Moreover, it is not yet certain whether Demon1 will represent DRG as a sixth player or as a replacement for one of the other DRG members.
Lea Maas
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