Guangzhou Charge and Paris Eternal have emerged winners of the Overwatch League Summer Showdown.
Why do we have two winners and not one? The teams won their first tournament in Overwatch League history after two days of competition that included knockout rounds and quarterfinals that saw wild upsets.
Guangzhou Charge and Paris Eternal were crowned champions because the single-elimination tournament for the entire league was split into two regions, Asia and North America.
After a tense series against the Shanghai Dragons, the Guangzhou Charge emerged winner of the Asia bracket championship while Paris Eternal beat the Philadelphia Fusion to the North American bracket prize.
The winners smiled to the bank with a $50,000 cheque with three bonus wins added to their season record. For the runners-up, they will also win $25,000, and two bonus wins with the third and fourth place teams receiving $10,000 and a single bonus win, respectively.
In the Asia Bracket, the last four included two 3-0 sweeps when the Shanghai Dragons swept the Seoul Dynasty. The runners up got better of their opponent due to a favorable meta and great teamwork.
In the other semi-final, despite putting up more of a fight as expected, New York Excelsior lost to the Guangzhou Charge as they were swept with ease, setting up the scene for a tensed and dramatic final that saw the Shanghai Dragons, square up against the Guangzhou Charge.
The Guangzhou Charge was dominant in the initial few maps of the first-to-four series, as off-tank Nam “Cr0ng” Ki-cheol and DPS Ou “Eileen” Yiliang fave out impressive performance with big plays.
The Dragons in double hitscan scenarios decided to run Bae “diem” Min-Seong and Kim “Fleta” Byung-sun, and Shanghai famous for their reverse sweep, took two maps off the Guangzhou Charge after they already built up a 3-0 lead.
Shanghai Dragons couldn’t even stop their opponent from winning with the power of the Fleta Deadlift, and the Guangzhou Charge claimed the Summer Showdown crown.
In the North America Bracket Semifinals, the Toronto Defiant roster exceeded every expectation, after entering the tournament as the 11th seed, but lost 3-0 to the Philadelphia Fusion’s favor.
In the other semifinals, San Francisco provided a shocking performance against the Paris Eternal, but they ended up losing. Kim “SP9RK1E” Young-han showed the stuff he was made of by being dominant on Genji, slicing through nearly all of San Francisco’s counters.
Paris Eternal mastery of the double shield composition was laid to bear, but the game went all the way to a map five, SP9RK1E through a well-supported Dragonblade took out the entirety of the Shock to help his team make it to the Summer Showdown grand finals against the Philadelphia Fusion.
The grand finale that ended 4-3 in favour of the Paris eternal was a tensed one as both teams traded punches evenly throughout the series.
In the final map, Paris Eternal won the tournament after holding the Philadelphia Fusion on Rialto, to win their first tournament victory.
