Fnatic are your Masters Tokyo champions!
With the win, they are now back-to-back international Valorant champions following their sweeping LOCK//IN São Paulo run where they defeated Sentinels, FURIA Esports, 100 Thieves, and Navi.
The only series where the score wasn’t perfect was against Evil Geniuses in the Masters Tokyo upper bracket semifinals. Meeting the NA representatives in the grand final, they appeared to have leveled up further, showing a dominating performance on Lotus and Split, before pulling through overtime on their strongest map, Bind, 14-12.
With the championship win, they earned the EMEA region an additional slot for Valorant Champions 2023, which means five teams will be heading to Los Angeles.
Masters Tokyo champions Fnatic only dropped on map on their run to the title
Coming into the grand finals from the upper bracket, Fnatic picked Lotus to open the series on attack. They led 4-1 early on before EG strung four straight rounds of their own.
EG’s Kelden “Boostio” Pupello on Killjoy popped off on defense, but his overall 19/18/2 KDA and 274 ACS wasn’t enough to pull them past the finish line because Fnatic read them like a book in the second half, shaking up their post-plant defenses.
FNC eventually won comfortably 13-8, taking the lead in the series.
Split was Evil Geniuses’ pick, but they could not find a solution to push past Fnatic’s defense in the first half.
The fifth round was a turning point that swung momentum in FNC’s favor. Timofey “Chronicle” Khromov on Breach found the first pick onto Skye before isolating the next two kills at A Main.
EG picked themselves up in the second half, stringing five rounds on defense, but FNC cut that short and prevented overtime by taking the 23rd and 24th round.
Since Fnatic came into the grand finals from the upper bracket, they banned Pearl and Fracture, two of EG’s best maps, which means that Bind was open and of course, they picked it.
To everyone’s surprise, EG pulled out an off-meta team composition that saw Kelden “Boostio” Pupello on Reyna, and Max “Demon1” Mazanov on Chamber.
In the post-game press conference, they revealed that the composition was “random” and that they “winged it” on Bind. Head coach Christine “potter” Chi added that ever since day one when the team was put together, Boostio had been requesting to use her in pro play, and he finally got his chance at the Masters Tokyo grand finals.
The composition worked for the majority of the decider, where at one point EG were up 10 rounds to four, but FNC clawed back to bring it up to 7-12, then tied it up 12-12 to force overtime and never looked back.
With the win, Timofey “Chronicle” Khromov makes history as the only player to win three international trophies in Valorant: Masters Berlin with Gambit Esports, then Fnatic for LOCK//IN São Paulo, and now Masters Tokyo. “It’s good to be the only one to win the most trophies in the whole world,” he said in the post-game press conference.
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