Major champions Outsiders exit BLAST early after 16-1 debacle

G2 ousted the Rio title holders from the BLAST Premier World Final after a near-flawless Mirage performance.

The IEM Rio Major champions, Outsiders, are the first to be eliminated from the BLAST Premier World Final following losses to Liquid and G2. The Russian-Kazakh side leave the tournament with salt in the wound, suffering a 1-16 loss on Mirage to G2 to end their disappointing run in Abu Dhabi.

It was Outsiders' first outing following the Rio triumph and their last of 2022. Their early exit from BLAST leaves the current order of the top teams in a turbulent state, after the second half of the year has seen three different teams win the three Big Events played. Vitality and HEROIC are now the only two teams who could double up following their ESL Pro League and BLAST Premier Fall Final triumphs, the latter playing with Kristian "⁠k0nfig⁠" Wienecke standing in for Martin "⁠stavn⁠" Lund.

G2 now move on to the quarter-finals in Abu Dhabi, where they will take on the second-placed team from Group B — the losing side of the match between OG and Vitality. The quarter-finals will be played on Friday, with G2 placed in the second slot, starting at 16:00 .

One man was instrumental in G2's win on the first map of the series, Inferno — Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov. The young sniper put up 34 kills on the opening pick, finding multikills and clutches in key moments time and time again. It started off with his triple in the pistol round and continued throughout the first half, as his Scout play and two 1v2 clutches spearheaded his team's 11-round offense.

Aided by m0NESY accidentally getting off the defuse with 0.5 seconds left in the pistol round in a rare mistake, Outsiders began to climb back into contention at the beginning of the second half. A 1v3 clutch from David "⁠n0rb3r7⁠" Danielyan stopped a forcebuy back-and-forth and the difference was soon just three rounds, but slowly but surely G2 edged closer towards victory. A couple of B defenses and more individual prowess from m0NESY finally got them over the edge.

G2 got off to a dominant start again on Mirage and this time didn't let the foot off the gas. Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač and company prevented Outsiders from even putting the bomb down until round 11 with a flawless defense. Although Dzhami "⁠Jame⁠" Ali's team finally broke through to the bombsite three times in the last five rounds, G2 performed a successful retake every time, even in a near-impossible situation in round 14 where m0NESY's quad-kill made the difference.

The 16-0 dream died once Outsiders turned the pistol round on its head from a 3v5 situation, defusing the bomb inside smoke, but their fate had been long sealed. Wasting no time, G2 forcebought in the second round and ended the match right there.