Earth, say a warm welcome to a returning FURIA.

After the joys of the last month or so, it was high time they were brought crashing down at ESL Pro League. We can’t let Brazilians have too much fun, we have to keep them somewhat humbled.

Still, we didn’t expect the humbler to be HOTU, largely as we’d literally never heard of them until today. We have heard of n0rb3r7 though, and he dropped the same 17-14 scoreline on both maps as HOTU won 2-0, leaving him joint top with mizu.

On the FURIA side, KSCERATO was still money, topfragging the lobby, but he was let down by a FalleN performance that was seriously lacking. Outcalled, outshot and out of the 1-0 bracket.

Fortunately for FURIA, it’s a Swiss system, so they’ve got another handful of chances to not soil the sheets.

They’re joined in the 0-1 bracket by 3DMAX, who managed to lose a 1-0 map lead to Inner Circle. In their defence, they did have Nivera subbing in for Maka, but it’s still a pretty horrendous result for a team just outside the top 10.

It’s not even like Inner Circle are much cop. Their results against the lower tier teams, like ESC, Betera and BIG have not exactly told the story of a team ready to break into the top tiers.

As long as you pretend that there aren’t any allegations about ESC and Betera, that is.

Doesn’t excuse the BIG loss, though…

Anyway!

HEROIC also found themselves on the losing side of a first-round game against Gentle Mates. They had a good run of building great rosters out of spare parts, but this project is falling flat right now.

Legacy dropped down after a really swingy 2-1 - they smashed B8 on Dust2, before getting a combined eight rounds in the next two maps. npl continues his reign of terror against tier two and three; he’s been ridiculously good against mediocre teams, without truly doing the same against good ones.

Disappointingly, Astralis avoided the ignominy of losing to Fluxo by battering them 13-2 in map three, with HooXi topfragging the series. Seems sustainable.

ENCE muscled past M80, GamerLegion took a close 2-0 over NRG, and G2 were completely untroubled against Rooster.

Obviously.

Fortunately for FURIA, they get to play a Brazilian derby against Fluxo, which should be a lay-up. M80 vs HEROIC is a spicy 0-1 game, while we’re excited for G2 vs Gentle Mates, which absolutely seems like a game G2 could conspire to lose.

The full list of today’s games can be found here.