FunPlus Phoenix FunPlus Phoenix China Rank #8 Autumn Kale Dunne Life Qu Donghao (瞿东豪) AAAAY Zhang Yang (张杨) BerLIN Zhang Bolin (張柏霖) yosemite Wang Lei (王磊) took down Bilibili Gaming Bilibili Gaming China Rank #5 whzy Wang Haozhe (王昊哲) Levius Lu Yinzhong (卢胤中) rushia Wang Xiaojie (王晓杰) nephh Marcus Tan Knight Liu Yuxiang (刘宇翔) 2-1 in the first round of elimination at the VCT China Stage 2 playoffs.

Today's match was just the second between the two rosters this year, as they had previously faced in the regular season of the first stage. FPX took a dominant 2-0 back in May, losing just eight rounds across both maps, raising the expectations for themselves coming into this lower bracket match.

History quickly seemed to be repeating itself, as FPX kicked off the match by way of a 13-3 on their opponents' Ascent pick. All they would have to do now is close it out on Icebox, their pick.

But BLG fought back, and they fought hard. FPX refused to let their opponents down easy, but BLG managed to score a 14-12 overtime win. Flex1n closed out the map with a 4K and topped the charts overall, scoring the highest ACS and ADR and tying for the most kills with opponent AAAAY .

Lotus was also a close affair, as the pendulum of momentum swung from one side to the other. The late game belonged to FPX, though, and they eventually reached a 13-10 win that put an end to the match.

Flex1n had B on lockdown.

Autumn and Life were a step above the rest of the server, accruing 121 kills (30 openers) between them throughout the three maps, more than half of all of BLG put together. The former also topped the charts in ADR and ACS, where he averaged 174 and 270, respectively.

Today was not the day for Bilibili, who are now on a three-match loss streak against BerliN's squad. Their last win against FPX was July 15 of last year in the lower bracket of the China Champions qualifier. They had to go the distance to beat FPX back then, but struggled to repeat that feat today.

Today's result also gets FPX a better seed for Champions, as they have secured a top three placement and forced Bilibili to be China's fourth seed heading into next month's Champions.

And while the tournament may be over for BLG, it's not for FPX. Life and his team will rematch Trace Esports Trace Esports China Rank #2 LuoK1ng Zhang Zhanpeng (张展鹏) Kai Lu Zhinan (卢智楠) FengF Song Xuefeng (宋学锋) heybay Ho Shun Hei Biank Zhong Jianfei (钟剑飞) in tomorrow's lower bracket final, where another win will set up a China Kickoff grand final between FPX and EDward Gaming EDward Gaming China Rank #1 S1Mon Hsien Meng-Hsun (谢孟勋) ZmjjKK Zheng Yongkang (郑永康) nobody Wang Senxu (王森旭) CHICHOO Wan Shunzhi (万顺治) Smoggy Zhang Zhao (张钊) .