NICKMERCS confirms he’s going pro in Apex Legends and already has a team

Nick ‘NICKMERCS’ Kolcheff has officially locked in plans to hit the Apex Legends pro circuit in 2022 after hitting Predator in the battle royale’s latest season, and he’s already got a team ready to play too.

The Twitch superstar has been toying with an Apex Legends pro career for some time now, originally raising the idea after hitting Predator late on in Season 10.

Up until recently, NICKMERCS had been far from locked into any Apex Legends pro plans. He’s been eager to “give the ALGS a try,” and made it up to the tournament’s third-round qualifiers last September, but for the most part, it’s just been a vague plan for the FaZe streamer.

Now he’s hit Pred a second time, however, he’s all-in.

In 2022, the Twitch star is “getting on the grind” in the Apex Legends pro scene, he revealed during a December stream, and he’s already got a team planned.

NICKMERCS revealed his Apex Legends pro plans in early December, teasing that his competitive squad is already two-thirds locked, and that their road to the big leagues is likely to begin with qualies in February.

“I have big plans for Apex Legends,” he teased.

“These plans could change, yeah, but right now I have plans. I want to climb the ranks of Predator, and I want to get to the point where I’m very comfortable [with the game]. I want to get to that point, be very comfortable, before late February next year, then I want to go for Apex Legends pro.

Kolcheff went on to reveal he already has one player locked into his trio, regular Twitch partner ItsDeeds, but is looking for a third to round out the team that he’ll be building for his ALGS campaign next year.

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“Me, Deeds, in. Then whoever we get as a trio. That’s what I want to do now. Maybe that changes by January, but it probably won’t. It’s really what I want to do.”

NICKMERCS has been a major advocate for Apex Legends since his high-profile Warzone defection in late August over the waves of cheaters “ruining” CoD’s battle royale.

It’s no surprise the 31-year-old wants to go pro in Respawn’s franchise game either ⁠— Kolcheff has always been a relatively competitive pro star. The Twitch streamer competed in Fortnite from 2018 to 2019, raking in more than $133k in prizes. He then pivoted into Warzone in 2020, earning a further $36k.

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Before Fortnite, Kolcheff forged his name in competitive Gears of War and Halo, streaming pro matches on Twitch precursor Justin.TV in the late 2000s.