The no-upset club

Across the planet, there are plenty of exclusive clubs. Yet none are as exclusive as the Paris Major’s “No Upset” Club. Not because the barrier of entry is high, but because only 2, arguably 3, teams could bloody hold their nerves.

Those amazing teams? Our Rio grand finalists: Vitality and Heroic. Congrats to them for actually beating the teams they’re supposed to beat. That’s a genuine compliment.

To be fair, Vitality didn’t exactly play underdogs in their first two games. For Christ's sake, they played G2 and ENCE. Though, any team is an underdog when ZywOo performs the way he did. Over their two maps, he had a 1.49 HLTV rating. If that doesn’t mean much to you, just watch this clutch, and you’ll understand. If CS were an art, ZywOo would be its Michelangelo. In that scenario, Spinx would be his apprentice. The young gun has started showing exactly why Vitality picked him up as he helped ZywOo sculpt their games into 16:13 wins.

Their Bo3 showed them the kind of mercy that the Bo1s didn’t by drawing Monte. Don’t take this as us discrediting Monte; clearly, they’ve been sick even to get here. But come on, Vitality just had the name value. So for the first time this Major, name value actually prevailed. Another ZywOo masterclass kept Vitality going against some tough Monte rounds, but in the end, a 2-0 is a 2-0 no matter how well-fought it was from Monte.

Heroic’s first game was against FaZe, which seemed hard on paper. Too bad paper isn’t life because FaZe was completely and utterly eviscerated. Apeks put up more of a fight than FaZe did. Still, they lost 16-10, but they tried. At least Liquid really gave it a go in the Bo3 decider.

The first two maps ended 16-11, with the teams taking each other’s picks. Ancient then was set up to be an epic decider, Liquid even won the first half 8:7 on their T-side. But the buzzkills at Heroic had to go and just be better, winning the map pretty comfortably in the end.

Again, congratulations to Heroic and Vitality, who now get to lean back in their chairs and watch their rivals get beaten by Into The Breach and Bad News Eagles.