Turkey representatives Fire Flux Esports have been crowned the champions of the 2022 PUBG Mobile Pro League (PMPL) European Championship. Despite starting in a slow manner, the team gained a huge amount of momentum on the second day and maintained it until the final series.
Fire Flux Esports accumulated a total 335 points over 24 matches during the competition, as they were the only ones to score six Chicken Dinners and cross the 300 point benchmark.
Kench (one of the team’s best fraggers) won the MVP title thanks to a massive 68 eliminations with more than eleven thousand damage dealt and 21 minutes and 19 seconds of average survival on each game.
After a couple of second place standings in PMPL Turkey, Besiktas Esports unfortunately were not able to break the curse, once again placing second in this tournament. The team was consistent from the first day and accumulated a total of 292 points. Besiktas missed five Chicken Dinners by an average of one or two places, impacting their overall amount of points.
Regnum Carya Esports managed to change their image from completely unknown to the underdogs of the tournament, surprising everyone with their overall performance and gameplay style, thanks to that they were able to clutch third place with 258 points.
S2G Esports, one of the stalwart teams within the franchise, wasn’t able to recover from a big first day deficit finishing in fourth place, while another veteran team within the scene, Koas Next Ruya, landed in fifth place.
In a shocking manner, TJB Esports EU, the champions of the Western European region, finished seventh due to lack of experience from their newer members. While Eastern Stars grabbed 174 points which included 87 total kills and two battle royale wins.
The PMPL Western Europe League Stage contenders Game Lord couldn’t find their gaming groove as they had to settle for the 11th place. It was also a disappointing tournament for the PMPL Turkey champions, the Fastpay Wildcats, as they finished sixth.
The overall story arc of the tournament as seen by the placements, is that seasoned and regional winning teams were not able to step up to the bigger stage. Sadly the main issue was the lack of adaptability to a more aggressive and unpredictable style of gameplay brought by teams like Fire Flux Esports and Besiktas Esports. Some teams have already mentioned a possible roster move trying to bring some young blood, as it seems aggressiveness is the name of the game currently.
Lastly, the tournament had a huge prize pool of 150K USD , with 1st place Fire Flux taking home 40k USD, while the two runners ups Besiktas Esports and Regum Carya Esports were rewarded with 28k and 18k USD, respectively. Ketch claimed a prize reward of 2k USD for receiving the MVP title .
It is easy to see Turkey has experienced exponential growth in PUBG Mobile esports, as the top five spots in the event went to the country. It will also be interesting to see which team is invited to the PUBG Mobile World Invitational 2022.
