In the lower bracket of the Champions group stage, the number one seed from CN Bilibili Gaming Bilibili Gaming China Rank #1 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) faced off against Pacific's two seed Rex Regum Qeon Rex Regum Qeon Asia-Pacific Rank #4 Monyet Cahya Nugraha xffero David Monangin Jemkin Maksim Batorov Kushy Bryan Carlos Setiawan crazyguy Ngô Công Anh . The Pacific team managed to find a 2-1 victory, sending China's best team home early without a win.

Coming into this match, both teams had just suffered 2-0 defeats in their opening match. RRQ was handled by FNATIC FNATIC Europe Rank #1 crashies Austin Roberts Boaster Jake Howlett kaajak Kajetan Haremski Chronicle Timofey Khromov Alfajer Emir Ali Beder , the same team that eliminated them from Masters Toronto, losing in a similar manner. BLG on the other hand, faced a shocking loss against MIBR MIBR Brazil Rank #1 artzin Arthur Araujo xenom Eduardo Soeiro cortezia Gabriel Cortez Verno Andrew Maust aspas Erick Santos , getting completely stomped by a team that didn't even make the Stage 2 playoffs. Both teams were looking to bounce back from their loss, and recover their tournament run.

Starting on RRQ's map pick of Sunset, the teams were evenly matched in the first half. RRQ started on the defense side, one where they've been struggling recently, so keeping it even with BLG throughout gave them confidence for the attack half. However, on the attack, Levius became a highlight reel for BLG. With three 3ks and a 4k, he and BLG only allowed one more round as they quickly won the map 13-7.

The first of Levius' second half highlights.

Head coach Ewok gave some insight as to how the team was able to recover from the battering sustained in map one. “Everyone is used to being in this situation,” he said, “we just needed to clear our heads and realize also who we are as a team and that we are a strong opponent.”

Heading to BLG's pick of Lotus, RRQ was in control for almost the whole time. They took a steady lead in the first half, and while BLG gained some momentum in the second half, even taking the lead at one point, once RRQ stabilized, they quickly strung together six rounds in a row to win the map 13-8.

Monyet closes out map two with an ace.

The final map came down to Abyss, where RRQ delivered an even bigger stomp than map two. Jemkin had a field day with BLG on the map, with a 2.08 rating and more than 400 ACS. BLG could only muster together two buy rounds before losing the map 13-4, exiting Champions with a whimper.

Jemkin was firing on all cylinders this map.

BLG becomes the second CN team to be eliminated, following the reigning champions EDward Gaming EDward Gaming China Rank #3 ZmjjKK Zheng Yongkang (郑永康) nobody Wang Senxu (王森旭) CHICHOO Wan Shunzhi (万顺治) Smoggy Zhang Zhao (张钊) Jieni7 Zhang Juntai (张君泰) . Although they have become a mainstay at international events, BLG have not made it out of the group stage of any event since their debut in 2023.

RRQ on the other hand have found their first win on the international stage. After a breakout domestic performance in Pacific this year, many new faces from RRQ hit the global stage for the first time at Masters Toronto. At Toronto, however, they were unable to live up to expectations as they were eliminated in just two matches. Now that they have broken past the first barrier, the next step in their path to the playoffs is MIBR.

In the post-match press conference, Jemkin was asked how he felt about going up against MIBR and aspas . “Very confident,” he said, “we watched them a lot… and it's nothing new.”