The MongolZ withstand crowd favorites FaZe to make semi-finals

The Mongolians ended FaZe's dreams of a Major title run with s1mple as a stand-in.

The MongolZ defeated FaZe 2-0 to lock down the last spot in the BLAST.tv Austin Major semi-finals, ending Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen's team's run in Texas in 5th-8th place.

With the win, the Mongolians have ensured their best Major result yet after they were stopped in the quarter-finals in Shanghai half a year ago, and are now favored to go one step further in their upcoming matchup against one of the surprises of the tournament, paiN, in the second semi-final of Saturday.

Date	Matches
BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025
21/06/2025	paiN 23:50 The MongolZ	Match

It's a crushing defeat for a FaZe that had hoped to go on a run to the grand final on the opposite side of the bracket from the three biggest favorites.

They were on the back foot from the start of the series, with no one other than karrigan stepping up to the plate on Mirage. The Danish in-game leader was their sole performer for most of the opener as The MongolZ secured a relatively comfortable win.

That began with a Deagle round six in which the Mongolians took advantage of some spot-on timings to go on a half-equalizing run, and from there they dominated the CT side to lock down the opening map.

Anubis was much more hard-fought, with FaZe capitalizing on a reinvigorated Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski, who secured a crucial 1v2 clutch at the end of the first half and a triple late in the second half that equalized the game at 11-11.

However, The MongolZ had Usukhbayar "⁠910⁠" Banzragch to count on in defense of the B bombsite, where the AWPer got two triples late in the game to tip the scales in his team's favor in an otherwise impressive team effort.

s1mple struggled in his first stage match in two years

Outside of a couple of flashy rounds, Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev struggled to make his mark on the game in his first return to the stage since IEM Rio 2023.

The Ukrainian concluded the series on the bottom of the board with a 0.80 rating, ending an otherwise promising Austin Major performance on a low note in what might have been s1mple's last match in the FaZe jersey, as karrigan suggested that the superstar was locked behind a buyout too big for his organization.

In a post-match interview on the BLAST broadcast, karrigan was coy about FaZe's future, once again admitting it had been a difficult season for the team. "We have to go back and review everything. The whole year has been really bad, and again a disappointment to not go further here, but it was a hail mary. For the future, a lot of things to think about," he said.