T1 has cemented its place as the best team in pro Valorant right now by winning the stacked Twitch Rivals: Valorant North American launch showdown tournament, defeating TSM in the Grand Final.
It was a hard-fought series, but T1 a.k.a. Team Brax managed to clutch out the grand final with a 2-1 score.
Both T1 and TSM dominated the competition leading up to the Grand Final. TSM’s Team Myth — which consists of TSM’s official Valorant roster, except for James “hazed” Cobb (who played for another team while Ali “Myth” Kabbani took his place) — finished their Group A run, besting Team dizzy, Team TenZ, and Team Hiko to make it to the semifinals. They then defeated Team Mendo for a spot in the grand final.
Meanwhile, T1’s Team Brax cleared out their group by defeating Team JakenbakeLIVE, Team Aceu, Team Kephrii, and Team Sh0ts to advance to the grand final.
Game One
In the first game of the final series, Team Brax started red hot by going up eight rounds to one, with Braxton “brax” Pierce securing a clutch win on Raze.
Keven “AZK” Larivière also managed to secure an amazing highlight by pushing Myth’s Dark Cover smoke, while the other team was going for a Resurrection. T1 would eventually win the first game on Bind with a final score of 13-7.
Game Three
After TSM evened the series by winning the second game on Haven, the match went back to Bind for the decier. There, T1 built another round lead by countering TSM’s site pushes by avoiding their ultimate. By staying alive, this gave the rest of T1’s members from the other spike site to rotate and flank TSM to win the round.
TSM found their way back into the game by winning an incredibly close round with a two versus one clutch from Stephen “reltuC” Cutler.
After the attacker-defender switch, TSM was able to catch up to T1 with an 8-8 score. However, on the 17th round, AZK was able to secure his own clutch win by wall-banging the enemy defuser and used his Rolling Thunder ultimate to catch Matthew “Wardell” Yu’s Sova inside Omen’s Dark Cover smoke.
On the final round of the match, T1 decided to attack the A site where both teams traded kills until only two members from each side were alive. With TSM’s remaining members still rotating from the B site, T1 managed to plant the Spike, secure defensive positions, and Tyler ‘Skadoodle’ Latham was able to heal himself up from 1 hp.
TSM tried to execute an A site retake with Wardell taking down Austin “crashies” Roberts, but Skadoodle was able to clean up to secure the victory.
With T1’s first-place finish at the Twitch Rivals North American launch showdown, the team was awarded a total of US$10,250 in prize money. While, TSM earned US$7,250 as the runner-up of the tournament.
READ MORE: Valorant esports power rankings: T1 is the team to beat
