You know how parents quantify the passage of time to an excited child in the number of sleeps? Well, instead of sleeps, I am two Shanghai Dragons wins away from getting my first tattoo. Thatâs because the Overwatch League Grand Finals tournament kicked off earlier todayâmuch earlier today as, for the first time ever, the finals will be held in Korean primetimeâand my Shanghai Dragons are just two wins away from taking the throne.
The double-elimination tournament features two teams from the North American regionâ2019âs champions the San Francisco Shock, and 2018âs runners-up the Philadelphia Fusionâand two teams from the Asia Pacific regionâ2020âs regular season Shanghai Dragon and the Seoul Dynasty. For the next two days, these four teams will fight their way through the bracket and if Shanghai wins it all, Iâve got a date with a tattoo artist.
As important to the playoffs as these teamsâ win records are their storylines, and 2020 is a redemption song for a lot of them. The Philadelphia Fusion is back to avenge their inaugural-season grand-finals loss to the London Spitfire. After two years of failing expectations, the Seoul Dynasty have finally made it to Overwatchâs biggest stage. The Shanghai Dragons, once one of the losingest teams in all of competitive sport, are on the cusp of completing the glow-up of the century with a grand-finals win. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Shock look to continue their dominance and become the first team to win back-to-back titles.
Iâm not going to complain about the early match times as Europe and Asia have suffered for two seasons under North American-centric scheduling, but Iâm so sad that these games are in the morning because itâs way too early to drink. And if the matches today are any indication of what fans can expect the rest of the weekend, Iâm going to want to drink.
That said, my Dragons performed wellâbetter than what I admittedly expected. Early in the covid-19 crisis, the Overwatch League head office decided to unevenly split the league into two regions: 13 teams in North America and 7 in Asia Pacific. With almost twice as many teams in NA as in APAC, I was worried Shanghai would be out of their depth. And while the APAC teams can put up a good fight, NA just has a larger pool of more talented teams. Shanghai was a big fish from a little pond finally swimming in open shark-infested waters. The Fusion, on the other hand, have had to hone their skills against heavy hitters like Paris, San Francisco, and the two Los Angeles teams. Philadelphia also has an absolutely terrifying DPS lineup with Carpe and Heesu and they can claim 2020âs Rookie of the Yearâsupport player Alarm. With this 3-0 victory over Philadelphia, Shanghai proved they are the team to fear.
Defeating a team like the Philadelphia Fusion 3-0 is practically unheard of, in fact, the only 3-0 defeat Philadelphia has suffered this year (of the two defeats they suffered at all this season) came at the hands of last yearâs winners the Shock. Despite a few tense moments in the opening map, Shanghai put their foot on Philadelphiaâs neck and did not let up. Philadelphia endured two back-to-back full holds in which Shanghai would not let them score a single map point.
You love to see it.
But my happiness at seeing that Shanghai can hold their own with the big boys promptly crumbled into dust when I saw who their next opponents would be: 2019âs Grand Champions, 2020âs May Melee and Countdown Cup winners, and the final boss of the Overwatch League: the San Francisco Shock.
The Shock stumbled in their match against the Seoul Dynasty, almost getting reversed swept until Seoul committed two tragic, unforced errors back to back, causing them to lose the fifth and final map. Since Seoul is another APAC team, maybe them almost beating San Francisco is proof enough that the Shock are fallible. Or maybe coming incredibly close to losing will be the shock (heh) to the system they use to tighten up their weaknesses.
The match between 2020âs two best teams kicks off tomorrow at 5:00 a.m. eastern time. Thatâs too early to drink and too early to yell, but I apologize in advance to my neighbors and my dog nevertheless.
