LEVIATÁN earns first Masters title in 3-2 victory over PRX

The finals curse reared its ugly head once again for Paper Rex Paper Rex Asia-Pacific Unranked invy Adrian Jiggs Reyes Jinggg Wang Jing Jie f0rsakeN Jason Susanto d4v41 Khalish Rusyaidee something Ilya Petrov . LEVIATÁN LEVIATÁN North America Unranked spike Rodrigo Lombardi blowz Guilherme Oliviera Neon Bruno Rodríguez Sato Eduardo Kenzo Nagahama Sato kiNgg Francisco Aravena defeated PRX at the Masters London grand finals, beating them 3-2 to win the team its first international tournament at its first international grand final appearance.

Fans both around the Copper Box Arena and viewing from home saw both teams dominate the upper and lower bracket with a healthy mix of immense mechanical talent, tense maps, and strategies that eliminated other skilled squads.

After banning Pearl and Haven, PRX picked Fracture to start the series. Of all the teams to not run double-Duelist, it was PRX, who opted for double initiator with Breach and Skye. A tense 1v1 from f0rsakeN gave PRX an early lead, and PRX worked around the Waylay double-Duelist from LEV handily to earn a bonus round win. When a team stun from kiNgg gave d4v41 an opportunity to truly shatter the mentality of LEV, the star flex player converted. With a large group of the crowd chanting the team name, PRX continued to steamroll with trap plays and sick shots, highlighted by a Jinggg triple Showstopper kill.

LEV only managed two rounds at the half, as PRX won the second pistol and bonus to end map one of the finals 13-2.

In a repeat of these two teams' first meetup in London, PRX jumped quickly to a series lead in dominant fashion. LEV needed a strong rebound on Split, and the team moved Sato from Waylay on map one to Phoenix. PRX earned another pistol win, but a clean bonus round from LEV kept the team within reach. When something started buying the Operator, LEV ran set off-barrier strategies to find, rush, and kill him with spike 's Neon. The map was close in the first half, with star moments from invy and Sato to reach a 6-6 tie at the half.

Then, for the first time in the series, LEV won the pistol and converted the bonus. Using that momentum alongside a hot Sato, LEV ended map two perfectly, 13-6. Tied 1-1, fans in London and across the world finally had a series on their hands.

LEV fans cheer on their squad in London.

PRX started Breeze with a pistol, though nearly lost the antieco and only kept a few guns for the bonus, which LEV capitalized on. Taking a lead with Neon on Jett in a double-Duelist comp, LEV forced an early PRX timeout, which failed to immediately shift the game, highlighted by a bit of a something Marshal whiff. Off of more clutch moments from blowz , LEV entered halftime on Breeze up 8-4.

Another pistol went the way of PRX, but an invested Operator on the bonus round failed as LEV kept the lead at 9-6. PRX on the attack side relied on invy and something, fighting and tying Breeze at 9-9. Taking the lead, many fans knew how PRX blew the lead on Pearl against EDG, and PRX fans hoped the team had learned from those mistakes. This time, up 12-9 off a d4v41 Viper's Pit and a d4v41 late flank, PRX secured map three 13-11 to get up to series and tournament point.

Map four was Ascent, a map where PRX demolished LEV last time the two teams met. This time, LEV earned the first pistol win, but lost the antieco to go down 4-1 after losing the economic advantage. Already, after a few round wins, LEV earned more round victories than the team did in the previous matchup. Tied 5-5, PRX pulled out the halftime lead, ending up 7-5.

PRX continued to win on pistols, taking a larger lead out of the half. LEV stopped the bonus round win and potential map-winning momentum, and pulled together some close round wins of their own to pull the map back to a late 10-10 tie. After pulling ahead on a PRX eco round, LEV proved victorious with a Neon masterclass from spike to close out Ascent 13-10 and take the series to map five.

Lotus would be the map that decided whether a formerly cursed squad would win its second Masters title, or if LEV would be a perfect 1 for 1 at international grand finals. Both teams ran the same composition of double-Duelist with Jett and Raze, alongside a Vyse as the solo Sentinel. After losing Sato first, LEV still played a strong C-site post-plant to win pistol and jump ahead. Despite losing the bonus, Sato sniped down three to keep LEV ahead early on in map five, even using the Raze ult to force d4v41 to back off. PRX forced blowz into a 2v1 soon after, but blowz stood strong to still convert the round.

The Raze from Sato was perfect, even buying enough time to win rounds after all of LEV fell. PRX had to take a timeout down 6-1 after blowz continued to obliterate his opponents. A standoff on C mound ended with LEV ahead, and PRX looked lost. Down 9-1, alecks used a timeout to try to bring his team back in the map. Down 11-1, the final map of the grand final was a mirror of the first: a complete stomp. LEV took the final pistol to get up to 12, forcing PRX to win every round afterward to just reach OT. The effort was there from the PRX players, but the steam of the train ran thin.

LEVIATÁN defeated PRX 13-5 on map five, securing the team its first-ever Masters win in an entertaining five-map series. The star of the series was spike , who was the factor on the final two maps on both Neon and Omen to take his team to victory. He ended the series with 19 first kills, 213 ACS, and 23% KAST.

After the match, in the press conference, spike talked about his journey from 2Game Esports 2Game Esports Brazil Unranked Brinks João Victor gobera Vitor Gobo qck Gabriel Lima xenom Eduardo Soeiro frz Leandro Gomes rookie to Masters London champ.

"On 2G, after we got into Americas, there were some issues that stopped us from performing well," spike said. "We didn't have as much of the experience. But now here, with this team, I'm playing with childhood friends, and I'm really happy we got through this together."

However, the tournament MVP was Neon, who was promoted from the academy team to earn an MVP bracelet as a rookie, and the first thing he said with the mic on stage was a shoutout to kiNgg, the experienced, loyal IGL of the team. Neon ended the tournament with a 1.21 match rating, fourth of all players, and was second in first kills per round at 0.18, only behind s0pp .