After two years of ups and downs, Boaster and his Fnatic squad finally proved they were worthy of hoisting a trophy in a gritty 3-2 victory over hometown favorite LOUD in São Paulo, Brazil this past weekend. The tournament saw 32 teams from across the globe gather to compete in this year’s VALORANT Champions Tour kickoff event, LOCK//IN São Paulo. Let’s take a look at Fnatic’s tournament run:
Round of 32: Fnatic 2-0 Sentinels
Round of 16: Fnatic 2-0 FURIA Esports
Quarterfinals: Fnatic 2-0 100 Thieves
Semifinals: Fnatic 3-0 Natus Vincere
Grand Final: Fnatic 3-2 LOUD
Breaking down the Grand Final further, Fnatic went up early in front of a crowd dominated by Brazilians cheering for LOUD with a strong 2-0 lead, taking Ascent and Fracture (13-8 and 13-7, respectively). From there LOUD found their footing and excelled at clicking heads to force a 2-2 tie with a 13-9 win on Split, followed by a 13-8 victory on Lotus. All eyes turned to the 5th map of the day in Icebox where an eventual champion would be crowned. LOUD started strong, riding the momentum of the Brazilian crowd and their own performances on maps 3 and 4 to an impressive 11-3 lead. Most of the arena, heck most of the esports world thought the series was over at that point, but the Fnatic boys trudged on and clawed their way back into the series round-by-round, win-by-win, eventually forcing a tiebreaker victory to win it all. The high-octane match pulled in the second highest viewership of any match in VALORANT esports history, falling just shy of 1.5 million viewers at its peak.
And if you think coming back from being down 11-3 on Icebox in Game 5 of the Finals is stunning, imagine leading the team’s comeback as in-game leader Boaster found a way to. Just five years ago he was a CS:GO content creator and now after this weekend he’s a crowned VALORANT champion. While one of the squad’s newest members Leo took the Finals MVP, Boaster deserves his own round of applause for assisting with building the team, leading them back from the 11-3 deficit that saw them crowned, and guiding them to not dropping a single map in the tournament until map 3 of the Grand Finals. Derke and Alfajer also found themselves on the winning end of round clutches in the comeback, while Chronicle played 5 different agents, fulfilling 5 different roles enroute to his second championship win; the first repeat for a player in the history of VALORANT esports. Everyone on the Fnatic squad, including the talented coaching staff lead by Mini, earned the right to hoist this event’s trophy high.
In addition to winning the lion’s share of the $500k prize pool, Fnatic also earned an additional team spot for the EMEA region at this year’s Masters event set to be held in Tokyo, Japan. Riot Games rounded out the event with two big announcements for the fans. The first being that this year’s VALORANT Championship will be held in Los Angeles and the second being the reveal of the next playable agent, Gekko. VALORANT fans have a lot to look forward to in the months ahead.
Image from: Fnatic
