Fortnite WC Champ Bugha explains how his dad helped kickstart his career
Epic GamesWorld Cup Solos champion Kyle ‘Bugha‘ Giersdorf is the best Fortnite player in his family, but he explains how it was his dad who got him to try the game in the first place.
Bugha became a household name after the Fortnite World Cup, a competition where he flat out dominated the whole way and came away with $3 million as a result.
Going into the final game of the tournament, it was pretty clear he was going to come away with the win, and his life was going to change forever.
In a documentary released by Epic Games, he explained that it was his dad who first got him into Fortnite.
“My dad played video games for like his entire life,” he said. “He first introduced to the game because he played Save the World, but I kinda found the Battle Royale, so I started playing that with some of my friends and eventually got to competing.”
Save the World is the PvE portion of Fortnite and is completely separate from the Battle Royale mode.
There was no way for his dad to know that by introducing Bugha to Fortnite, he would reach the pinnacle of the game just two years later.
The World Cup was his first-ever local tournament, and his parents remained supportive of him all the way through.
“We were so nervous that we wanted to just get straight to our seats,” his mom said. “So, we just made a beeline. When we walked in, we were just like ‘Wow.’ You can’t even like imagine your son would be part of this amazing production.”
Amusingly, his parents didn’t even think him winning the whole thing would be a possibility, but they were quickly proven wrong.
When the tournament was underway, he let his play do all of the talking for him. He went to his usual drop spot, Lucky Landing, and eventually finished that first match off with nine eliminations and a victory.
He followed up the first-place finish in the initial match and laid an egg in the next, earning no points. His dad said he noticed that as a turning point.
“I was watching him and I know that he knew what he did was wrong and he just sat there at first, then I saw a seriousness get on his face,” his dad said. “And then I said ‘I think he’s going to be good now.'”
Through four games, he was still firmly in first place, despite a 90th place finish in the second game. Going into the final match, Bugha explained his mindset.
“The sound around me kinda just evaporated and let me get into the zone,” he said. Before the match began, his parents were moved closer to the Winner’s Circle, indicating he was on the verge of coming out on top.
When it was all said and done, Bugha was the champion, but who knows if we would be there at all if it weren’t for his mom and dad.