Joshua “steel” Nissan is the current captain of Torqued, an ex-Overwatch pro and member of the former iBUYPOWER squad recently unbanned by ESL, DreamHack and others.

The Canadian CS:GO veteran is competing in his hometown of Toronto this weekend at WorldGaming’s Canadian Championship Series.

In this first part of our two part interview, steel took the time to talk with theScore esports about jumping back into competitive CS and whether there's an unspoken rivalry between him and his ex-iBUYPOWER teammates.

First off, congratulations on the news that Torqued made the IEM Closed Qualifier. Given that, I guess it’s safe to say things are going well with that team? You were with them a few years ago, what motivated you to join back up with Torqued?

Yeah things are going pretty well so far.

I was actually planning on going back to Torqued before I left/was removed from iBUYPOWER because I enjoyed playing with them. I respect them as players, I like them as people, so we get along really well. It’s always my philosophy that you should be able to get along with each other in and out of game to be able to really get the best out of everyone and that’s not something that I really felt on iBUYPOWER or other teams that I played with.

Speaking of iBUYPOWER, you guys were recently unbanned by ESL, DreamHack and others, which is something a lot of NA CS:GO fans are excited about. Take me through the day you learned the former iBUYPOWER squad was unbanned. What went through your mind, how did you react when you first heard?

When I was first unbanned I really just took some time to process it, I never really jumped into anything. I didn’t really announce anything … I didn’t go telling friends or family, it was kind of like ‘let’s just see where this goes for now and see what this means, what the implications are.’ So I just spent a week processing it and seeing what the options would be as opposed to just getting super into competitive right away.

How did you first find out?

I got an email fairly early in the morning, it was around 9 a.m., maybe even earlier.

I read it, then I tweeted a thinking emoji and by the time I had read the email and tweeted the thinking emoji they actually made the announcement public. So by the the time they emailed us to the time they announced it publicly was about 30 minutes.

After you did go through that initial week of reflecting about and thinking about it — what were your thoughts?

I’ve always been a competitive player at heart so yes, my instant reaction was ‘OK, how can I kind of re-enter? What tournaments am I allowed to play in, what’s the extent of this — have other places unbanned me as well?’ So I was just trying to weigh my options and kind of see what has actually changed. But competition was definitely high up on that list.

If you had the opportunity to play with DaZeD, AZK and the rest of ex-iBUYPOWER again, would you want to?

I don’t think that’s what any of us really want. We’ve all just gone our own separate ways and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. When I was playing on iBUYPOWER … we were there together because we were the best, not because we were the best and we were friends.

At the end of the day, it’s your job, but it’s also something you’re going to spend a lot of time on so why not be happy while doing it? I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that we wouldn’t want to play with one another.

Is there any kind of unspoken rivalry between you and the rest of the ex-iBUYPOWER guys now that you’re all competing again? Do you ever think about facing off against them and beating them?

I mean, it would be nice — I don’t think there’s some sort of rivalry that we would push. I think the rivalry would be what the community sees as a storyline. But we’re not necessarily out to get them more than we’re out to get any other team.

If people want to think this is a DaZeD vs. steel thing, in terms of IGLs on a team, then I guess the community can see it that way and that might be the kind of narrative that we all adopt, but at the moment I’m focusing on my thing and that’s all that matters to me at the moment.

Stay tuned for part two of our interview with Steel, where we discuss his streaming, how he'll balance it with playing competitively and his thoughts on PUBG and the Overwatch League.

Colin McNeil is a supervising editor for theScore esports. You can follow him on Twitter.