Toronto Ultra’s Tobias “CleanX” Juul Jønssonn never cared about his gamertag. He’s been called “tissue boy” and the “tissue who’s an issue” by fans, as well as other silly nicknames whenever he pops off on the map. If there’s a pun to be made about cleaning up a mess, CleanX has probably heard it.
While the jokes are all in good fun, the origin of CleanX’s gamertag didn’t come from him. It came from an Xbox.
“The old Xbox consoles would have pre-made gamertags and my cousin made my account for me when I was like ten,” CleanX, the only player from Denmark to make it to the Call of Duty League, said. “It was Mr. Clean X with a bunch of numbers. Everyone always made tissue jokes, though.”
The origins of the Danish Danger
The 21-year-old Call of Duty player originally wanted to change his gamertag while he was tearing up the European Call of Duty scene. But, when he went pro with the Toronto Ultra in October of 2019, he knew he had to keep it.
“There’s no changing it then,” he said while laughing. The Cold War superstar has been “sneezing” the moment on Toronto after the team became the only other roster to win a major during the season. Now, he and his team are heading into the Call of Duty League Championship as the second seed behind Atlanta FaZe.
CleanX grew up in a small farming town in Denmark called Sdr. Vinge, miles away from the nearest store. Since he lived “in the middle of nothing,” CleanX had to take interest in things outside of gaming to keep him busy. When he wasn’t playing Call of Duty or Halo, he loved taking his dogs for a walk, playing soccer and tending to his garden.
CleanX and his brother would switch off who got to play with every death — a scene that many current professionals can relate to. When switching off got boring, the two brothers would challenge their cousins to one versus ones or two versus two, whenever they visited.
“We would 1v1 against our cousin too when they would come over since they lived close [to us],” CleanX said. “We would have 2v2s and stuff like that on Halo 2. That was how I got into video games; just playing split-screen against my cousins on one flatscreen tv. You sit there and look at their screens and just troll around.”
CleanX was a natural competitor
CleanX grew his love for video games through playing with his family, but he didn’t start seriously competing until Advanced Warfare came out in 2014. He got an Xbox 360, began pub stomping and eventually found his way to competing in tournaments on GameBattles.
“It kind of just went from there,” he said. That is until the Danish wonder ran into an unexpected roadblock. Tournament organizers added a new rule that competitors had to be 18 in order to compete. CleanX was only fourteen at the time and would have to wait four years to compete again.
“I sold my Xbox 360, so I didn’t even have my console,” CleanX said as he reflected on those years. “I went on to play Counter-Strike, just like any other Danish kid would do. It was when Astralis was at the top and everyone was buying PCs to play. I would be having like long sessions of grinding Counter-Strike with my friends.”
Outside of playing with his friends, CleanX also studied for a degree in business economics. In 2019, when he was competing on Singularity, he got his associate degree just a week before the Black Ops 4 qualifier for Champs.
In 2018, when CleanX turned 18, he starting competing professionally again with Call of Duty: World War II. He was picked up by Singularity in time for the Copenhagen Games. There, his team placed second overall, despite the break he took due to age restrictions.
After Counter-Strike, CleanX joined the Toronto Ultra
It wasn’t until Modern Warfare that CleanX would get his real shot at going professional on a franchised team. He joined Toronto Ultra as a substitute and was moved to their starting roster in the middle of the year. While the team was never amazing at the game, they had a good performance at Champs when they finished top six to take home $300,000.
CleanX is the only professional Call of Duty player outside of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom or Ireland to win a major event. Since joining the main roster in 2020, CleanX has become an essential part of Toronto Ultra’s success and it’s what has kept them a top-tier team behind Atlanta FaZe.
Nothing will stop CleanX from giving it all at Champs; not even losing to an incredible comeback by Minnesota RØKKR at the Stage 5 Major. He’s looking to bring more pride to his home country of Denmark.
Time has been flying by for CleanX as his career reaches new heights with every Call of Duty League season. It’s been hard for him to slow down and realize how far he’s come. It wasn’t the major win, or the signing that came to him, when asked about the moment he “made it” in Call of Duty.
“It was the drive between the airport and the Toronto facility,” he said. “When you drive you can see the whole skyline. I had this ‘holy shit’ moment. My mind I was just blown.”
Published: Aug 17, 2021 02:57 pm