Natus Vincere’s domination of 2021 proved to be unstoppable when they defeated Gambit Esports at the grand finals of CS:GO's BLAST Premier World Final. NiKo, ZywOo and more, they’ve all accepted the superiority of s1mple and NAVI, and 2021 has become even more incredible.
By defeating Gambit 2-1 in the grand finals, NAVI took the $500,000 prize money home. However, Gambit won’t leave empty handed either, as their prize is $250,000. Let’s get to the details of s1mple and NAVI’s performance.
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Natus Vincere’s 2021 performance affected the World Final
An incredible streak, seven top tier tournaments won and two more where they were the runners-up… Natus Vincere, led by the monster AWPer s1mple, has dominated the CS:GO arena and they are arguably the best team in the history. Of course, such a performance would be projected on to the World Final too, but what they did was still unexpected.
After getting thrown into the lower bracket with a 2-1 loss against Team Liquid, the thoughts for the same amongst the CS:GO fans, is Natus Vincere letting this one go? After wins after wins throughout the year, it may have been the case. However, s1mple said no. s1mply, no.
With two overtime rounds, of which only one they won, NAVI made their way to the lower bracket final. On the way, they defeated Heroic, NiKo's incredible G2 and Team Liquid, which defeated them in the first place. Players like NiKo have overperformed in order to stop NAVI, but whenever he was needed, s1mple put even more to the table. To the point where he came near to the impossible.
Team Vitality vs Natus Vincere
Why am I saying that? At NAVI vs G2, NiKo showed an incredible performance, helping his team get back up every single time they fell. However, As an answer to 64 kills performances of Bosnian players at G2, s1mple accumulated 88 kills during three maps. 88! At that point, it was clear: NAVI was not letting this go and Vitality would have to surrender once again.
It took two maps for NAVI to own Vitality. In a series where ZywOo couldn’t even make that much of a difference, Natus Vincere easily won Nuke 16-12 and Dust II 16-5. It looked like Vitality accepted the inevitable outcome, they looked helpless. NAVI got the tickets for the grand final that would be played on the same night, and Vitality went back to work on their 2022 plans.
Grand finals: Gambit Esports vs Natus Vincere.
After defeating Vitality, I believe NAVI had the upper hand here at the grand finals, although Gambit came here without losing a single series. It’s just that NAVI got defeated in the first round and came all the way here somehow. If I was one of Gambit’s players, I would get some bad feelings about this.
NAVI’s pick was Mirage, Gambit’s pick was Ancient and the decider was Inferno at this best of three.
Gambit started great on Mirage. After a close first half with 9-6, Gambit managed to find the rounds they needed to win the map while giving NAVI only 5 rounds. However, s1mple was warming up. He had the second most kills overall with 24 frags. Watch out…
Because, on Ancient, s1mple and electronic duo took the matter in their hands. On Gambit’s pick, the Russo-Ukrainian duo took 50 kills with s1mple taking 26 of them. They finished the map just like how Gambit ended with 16-11. It was the time for the decider at Mirage.
On Mirage, NAVI started out great with 11-4. Additionally, as you can watch from the clip below, if Gambit had any chances of coming back, it was killed by s1mple. He was relentless. Taking 27 kills in 24 rounds, s1mple helped his team take the decider home with 16-6 and finished it. At the CIS final, NAVI became the best, once again.
Some stats from BLAST Premier World Final
The best rating, according to HLTV, was the rating of s1mple with 1.42. He had 1.52 KD, just over ZywOo’s 1.42 and it is clear how important his performance was for his team to win this event. s1mple also had the best damage per round with 92.7 and total kills with 358. The closest was electronic, with 295.
According to Esports Charts, BLAST Premier World Final had a peak viewer count of 727,376. The average viewer count was 306,979, and the most viewed match was of course, the grand final between Gambit and NAVI. The five matches with the best peak viewer count included Natus Vincere.
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