Day one of the BLAST Premier ’22 World Final is behind us, and it was full of surprises and long hard-fought maps.
A special treat were some of our supposed underdogs, who showed up prepared and hungry to win, proving they had stepped up since Fall Final.
With their Rio Major form, Outsiders would have probably crushed Liquid with ease, but in their opening World Final match, nitr0 and his crew looked stronger than their CIS opponents.
Even though the North Americans were the ones to pick the first map Inferno, the match was dominated by Outsiders, who first looked well-prepared to deal with Liquid’s tactics. The CIS crew nearly ended the battle in the first half (13:2), pushing Liquid to get it together and start returning fire. And they did, but the Outsiders crew were too far ahead and claimed the first map win at 16:10.
However, tables turned on the following Anubis. The maps big debut on the tier 1 scene gave Liquid a convincing win, fueled by NAF’s dominance, taking it 16:8. The situation looked pretty similar on the next Mirage, with Liquid not letting Outsiders bounce back and taking another 16:8 victory.
This one was a heartbreaking defeat for G2, who almost managed to kick off their World Final run in a really impressive manner — nearly taking down the mighty FaZe.
As it’s often the case with G2, the team started the match with an excellent performance on their pick Nuke, overwhelming their opponents 10:16. Both NiKo and m0NESY showed that they’re in great form and that they came prepared for FaZe.
The second map on Inferno was extremely close, as the teams were exchanging rounds one by one. The scoreline went from 8:7 to 15:15, but in overtime, FaZe proved to be just a bit stronger and claimed the match 19:17.
Affected by this loss, G2 shattered on the third Ancient, and FaZe finished it quickly — 16:4.
Heroic entered the World Final with a predicted drawback that actually proved to be a real source of strength: k0nfig. Stepping in for stavn, k0nfig didn’t have a lot of time for preparation, yet he was ready to pull the rope and attempt to carry Heroic throughout the difficult fight with OG.
OG first won their map pick Inferno 11:16, before k0nfig started generously handing out kills on second Mirage, helping Heroic to snatch a map for themselves with a 16:9 scoreline.
However, it wasn’t enough against degster, who was simply too phenomenal on the third map Anubis, bringing OG the desired victory at 19:22. k0nfig told us Heroic didn't have time to prepare Anubis, so quite the scoreline for the Danes regardless of if this was true or just mind games.
The most anticipated match of Day 1 was the only one that didn’t go into the third map, as despite s1mple’s best efforts, ZywOo & Co were simply better this time. Not only did the French superstar play some fantastic CS, Spinx was also on fire. The whole squad really did their part to secure the win in two maps.
Opening on Inferno, the two teams looked rather equal, with Vitality closing the game at 16:19. The following Nuke was also pretty close, but when overtime rounds began, Vitality proved to be exceptionally good at exploiting Na’Vi’s CT strategy and won the map with a score of 11:16.
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