Evil Geniuses has won the Valorant Champions tournament, beating Paper Rex 3-1 in the grand final to become world champions.
The final was an intense match, with both teams looking strong at different periods of the match. Coming from the upper bracket gave Paper Rex a two-map ban advantage, but that wasn’t enough to stop EG, who took wins on Split, Bind and Lotus to win the match.
The opening two maps of the final were pretty close, with EG taking map one 13-10 and then Paper Rex turning things around to win the next one 13-11. This essentially turned the best-of-five final into a best-of-three, and then EG put on a dominant performance on Bind to win the map 13-5 and really swing momentum in their favor. Louts, one of the newer Valorant maps, was up next and proved to be the last map in the competition, with EG taking a 13-10 win to become champions.
To make the final EG didn’t have an easy run. While they convincingly topped their group with 2-0 wins over FunPlus Phoenix and FUT Esports, once they made the playoffs they were given some tough match ups. They first took down EDward Gaming 2-1, then beat DRX 2-0 to set up their first meeting against Paper Rex. They would lose this upper bracket match 2-1, with the final map going to overtime, showing how evenly matched the two teams were. They would then take down reigning champions Loud in another close match that ended 3-2 to set up a rematch in the final.
Paper Rex also convincingly topped their group, beating KRÜ Esports and EDward Gaming 2-0. They then took down FUT Esports 2-0 in the first round of the playoffs, before sending Loud to the lower bracket with a 2-1 to set up the first match against EG in the upper bracket final.
The win over Paper Rex not only makes EG the Valorant World Champions, but it also gives them a massive $1 million to take home. Paper Rex claimed $400,000 for taking second place while last year’s winner Loud got $250,000 for third. Fnatic, the team many expected to win the tournament after looking almost unbeatable all year, could only manage fourth place and get $130,000.
After a slow and disappointing start, the final few days of the Valorant Champions tournament were pretty good and was certainly a massive improvement on the early stages of the competition. A particular highlight was the reveal of the new map Sunset, which was done in an epic fashion that the crowd loved. Hopefully, the event will be even bigger next year and we will be treated to some closer action throughout the tournament.
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