AZ_Axe
Family
His father and sister are both accomplished martial artists. Both of his parents are supportive of his career path.
Gaming Origins
AZ_Axe was born in Germany to military parents, who moved back to the US when he was a baby. He started playing console video games when he was small and his parents bought him the Nintendo 64 soon after it released, along with Super Smash Bros. As he was also a Pokémon fan, it immediately became his favorite game. A few years later in 2001, he then got the Super Smash Bros. Melee game for the GameCube.
Around 2006, when he was in high school, he learned that his school was holding a Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament and immediately entered. However, he was beaten by the other contenders and discovered that he wasn’t as good as he thought he was. This motivated him to try harder and to develop his skills further in order that he would perform better in later tournaments.
Professional Gaming
He attended his first LAN tournament in 2007 and acted in a semi-pro level when he left high school. However, he did not pursue a fulltime gaming career at that point as it wasn’t viable for him, so he attempted college for a couple of years, but dropped out after a couple of years due to lack of interest.
He then went on to work at Walgreens. Despite working fulltime, he continued to attend local LAN tournaments on the weekends. In 2014, his hard work paid off and he finally attracted his first sponsorship and was signed with Tempo Storm in 2015. This enabled him to leave his job so that he could focus on practicing for tournaments and streaming fulltime.
Income
According to his Twitch overlay, AZ_Axe has~930 subscribers. This means that his base monthly income should be at least $2.325 USD per month, excluding revenue from tiered subscriptions, advertisements, sponsorships, his team salary, Twitch cheer bit donations, tournament winnings and tips. EsportsEarnings places his lifetime tournament winnings at over $61,000 USD.
Streaming Hours
He doesn’t have a set schedule.
Quotes
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First of all, you want to practice a lot before any tournament… I basically gain my confidence through my practice. So, if I know that I practiced a lot, I know that I’m ready, because I’ve spent all this time training. I know that there’s new techniques and things that I’ve been working on… So just practicing alone puts me in the right mindset to compete. [Also,] during tournaments, you want to eat healthy. What really helps me is eating healthy and eating light… [don’t] have any heavy foods or stuff yourself or anything… It will help you just feel more ‘in the zone’ and able to focus a lot better. Not feel so sluggish.
