The year ends with the crowning of a new, deserving champion at BLAST Premier.
The entire world might be rejoicing over Argentina’s victory in the FIFA World Cup, but most of the CSGO world is still busy mulling over the events earlier in the day, when the Grand Final of BLAST Premier World Final was played. French organization G2 Esports went up against American powerhouse Team Liquid. Both teams were in scintillating form, and both had a bevy of superstars at their disposal. With such even sides locking horns, the result would come down to who played it best, and played it coolest.
Grand Final – G2 Esports vs Team Liquid
For a culmination of such a lengthy buildup, the World Final was at least a little underwhelming. For starters, it only lasted two maps out of a possible three, and only one of the games went past a total of 25 rounds. Nevertheless, the action on offer managed to thrill those present, and anyone even remotely associated with the pro scene of the game had to admit that Nikola “NiKo” Kovač was among those who most deserved to win it.
1092 days. pic.twitter.com/493Vqxeiy4
— BLAST Premier 💥 (@BLASTPremier) December 18, 2022
Map 1 – Inferno
Fresh off the back of picking up 12 rounds on the T-side against FaZe Clan, G2’s Inferno pick was perfectly justified even before they racked up a ridiculous 11 rounds on it. Liquid were left to feast on scraps as they failed to string rounds together at any point in the half, and only got four in total.
The second half began in G2’s favor once more as the French outfit took the Pistol Round as well as the two after it. Liquid put up a bit of a fight with a 3-round streak at last, but the damage was too deep and they couldn’t repeat G2’s feat from yesterday. Two more rounds, and the Americans had succumbed to French superiority.
Justin “jks” Savage put up a bomb performance to hand his team the win, but it would be criminal not to mention Rasmus “huNter-” Nielsen’s contribution. Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski was the only person on his team to have an HLTV rating of over 1.00 on the map, but to his dismay, the others were nowhere close.
Map 2 – Mirage
Moving to Liquid’s pick of Mirage, the start made it seem as though the NA side had a much better shot as they took a 3-2 lead. However, G2’s defense then became a brick wall as they took 7 on the trot. Thankfully for Liquid, they managed to close the half with a critical trio of rounds that saw them defending 6 on the CT-side.
Once switched, it seemed as though Liquid might be able to become impervious themselves, as they posted five straight rounds after losing the first two to tie up the scores. G2, however, proceeded to take five of the next six to close out the tournament outright.
This time around, it was NiKo who topped the charts with Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov tied to him but with three fewer assists. They were given solid support by both jks and huNter- who weren’t far behind. For Liquid, it was a day in the life for EliGE as the unlucky superstar top fragged only to be let down by his teammates.
Young m0NESY Wins MVP
CSGO is well-known for its young talents, and m0NESY is as brilliant and deadly as they come. He was voted the MVP of the tournament at just 17 years of age — his first award of the kind at an S-Tier event.
Once again MVP. Congratulations, @G2m0NESY 🏆#BLASTPremier @Maersk pic.twitter.com/5sam8jSva1
— BLAST Premier 💥 (@BLASTPremier) December 18, 2022
According to HLTV, he picked up 251 frags with a headshot percentage of 35.5, died just 174 times for a K/D Ratio of 1.44, and had an Average Damage per Round of 73.3 across 317 rounds over the course of the event. Osipov also had 0.79 kills for each of those rounds, a Kill/Assist/Survived/Traded percentage of 74.1%, and his overall rating across the tournament was a brilliant 1.24 with a 1.28 Impact Rating.
With the year at an end, we won’t have any recaps for quite a while, but we’ll come up with plenty of CSGO content in that time, so stay with us.
