Evil Geniuses conquer Champions on home soil

In 2022, NA was robbed of a world championship. OpTic were manhandled by LOUD in two matches that gave the Brazilian squad its first and only championship to date. In 2023, NA robbed the Pacific of a world championship.

With a 3-1 win over Paper Rex Paper Rex Asia-Pacific Unranked mindfreak Aaron Leonhart Jinggg Wang Jing Jie f0rsakeN Jason Susanto d4v41 Khalish Rusyaidee something Ilya Petrov , Evil Geniuses Evil Geniuses North America Unranked Derrek Derrek Ha NaturE Nicholas Garrison supamen Phat Le are the 2023 Valorant World Champions.

“It was insane. I don't even have the right adjectives. It was incredible,” potter said of seeing her team win.

Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games

More than the celebration of the third world championship, NA's first, Riot made today about a celebration of Valorant. A Fan Fest surrounded the venue with food, games, cosplay, and much more. Even the veto, which is typically recorded and then played live on the broadcast, was held outside in the Fan Fest.

And after two hours of warmup, everyone headed into the KIA Forum.

ericdoa, Jazz Alonso, Emei, Grabbitz and bbno$ took to the stage for the Opening Ceremony. When the artists were done, an Augmented Reality plane lowered the iconic Champions trophy into the arena. The players took to the stage, the final tease was played, and the players sat down.

The match kicked off on Split, Paper Rex's pick, which hosted an extremely chaotic first half where jawgemo found a whopping 17 kills despite being down 8-4 at halftime. But it was his teammate, Demon1 , who carried Evil Geniuses over the line with a 1.49 map rating that gave his team the 13-10 win.

EG dropped just two rounds once they switched to attack, largely thanks to hot plays from their star duelist. In the second half alone, Demon1 racked up 18 frags and had 285 ADR. Overall, that made for 211 ADR and six opening frags, totalling 27 frags with a 41% headshot rate.

What followed were three more maps where both teams put all of their skill, aim ability, tactical depth, patience, and nerve on show. Demon1 finished the series with a 1.31 rating and 79 kills, second only to jawgemo's 85 kills (17 first bloods).

“Fuck the haters. Respect my fucking name. I'm the best player in this game,” Demon1 said after the win.

On Ascent, Paper Rex almost succumbed to their opponents' attack once more, but just narrowly grabbed a 13-11 win. Evil Geniuses appeared to take that personally, and replied with a quick and clinical 13-5 on their opponents' Bind pick, placing themselves on match point heading into their Lotus pick.

Lotus was an absolute back-and-forth brawl, where the dust never settled. Paper Rex got a 2-0 start, but Boostio answered with a 3K. Two rounds later, Boostio aced as his team retook C site. Paper Rex still got a marginal lead, but Evil Geniuses took a timeout and tied it back up at 5-5 with a 4K from jawgemo.

Both squads kept ripping rounds off of each other until the final stages of the match, when Paper Rex tied the map at 9-9. jawgemo hit back with a 4K and rose to brilliance in those final five rounds, where nothing could stop Evil Geniuses. He and Demon1 combined for 32 kills on attack alone, and stormed onto sites effortlessly to give Evil Geniuses a 13-10 win.

And just like that, with a handful of swift site takes, Evil Geniuses became the 2023 Valorant World Champions.

But to do that, Evil Geniuses had to go over Paper Rex, who have been one of the strongest teams in the world in 2023.

This time last year, Paper Rex were bombing out of the Valorant Champions 2022 group stage with a 2-1 loss to Team Liquid. But they trusted what they had already built, they trusted the grind, and made a singular — but bold — move.

Midway through VCT Pacific, Paper Rex replaced IGL Benkai with something . They added a star duelist who was farming in the lower tiers of Japanese Valorant and moved to an even looser playstyle, without a fixed IGL calling the shots. And it worked.

Playing with substitute cgrs instead of something (due to visa issues), Paper Rex ripped the competition apart at Masters Tokyo and only stopped in the lower bracket final, where Evil Geniuses beat them for the first time 3-2.

In their Champions run, Paper Rex were only able to climb one more step in the VCT podium. But their time has not arrived yet. They will have to contend with a silver medal and hold back their tears.

“I think we could have done better, but it is what it is. [We] maybe struggled a little bit with emotions. After losing one final, you really want to win the second one sometimes,” alecks said. “That feeling of winning overpowers everything — it's like a jarring thought. You tend to make more mistakes, because every decision you make weighs more.”

Paper Rex's coach also said that his squad did not perform to their fullest today, but was close to it. Jinggg attributed it mostly to pressure.

“In the end, I think EG was the better team today and they totally deserved the win,” alecks finished.

It's an especially bitter defeat for Paper Rex given they will soon lose Jinggg, one of the core's founders who joined the team nearly two years ago, and who they hoped to give a perfect send-off to.

“I've been with Jinggg in real life for like three years. And, of course, the fact he's going to [the] army next year and I can't meet him in real life anymore. I think [I will] miss him. But he will be back,” f0rsakeN said.

“This is more ‘see you soon' rather than ‘goodbye,'” alecks said.

“Hopefully, you guys remember me just as a crazy Raze player,” said Jinggg.

See you soon, Jinggg. (Photo by Yicun Liu/Riot Games)

When 2023 kicked off 238 days ago, nobody could predict that this organization, and specifically this team, would become the World Champions. Most of Evil Geniuses had just bombed out of the 2022 NA LCQ and struggled to reach the top four of the BoomTV Proving Grounds.

Demon1, the team's star and renowned trash talker, didn't attend either of those tournaments. He was grinding other Tier 2 tournaments with sqn 2.0 sqn 2.0 Inactive Demon1 Max Mazanov zero cap Phil Pham tie Tai Diep lazylion Nathan Hoang . Ethan's roster was the one that eliminated Evil Geniuses from that NA LCQ.

Now? They're all together, in Los Angeles, celebrating their first VCT titles as a team and as individuals.

In the post-match interview, potter told everyone how she predicted greatness for her roster.

“[Goldenboy], you were there when I was screaming from the rooftops that this motherfucker [Boostio], this kid right here [jawgemo] and this kid [C0M] were going to be the best players in NA.”

In the press conference, those three players elaborated further on what the win meant. For Boostio, jawgemo, and C0M , this journey started back many months ago, when Evil Geniuses first started building this roster.

The IGL said seeing his teammates cry tears of joy made him “extremely happy.” C0M was unable to put into words how thankful he was for his teammates and friends, saying earlier in the post-match interview he did it for his grandfather. jawgemo, on the other hand, “knew that if [they] stuck together, [they] can get that trophy. And it's right here now.”

Boostio reflected on several nights he spent out with jawgemo, where the two would be “daydreaming with each other while drunk” about making it into Champions and the partnership leagues.

“Now [that] we're here, it's really sick to look back on those days.”

From a drunken daydream to their careers' greatest achievement. (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)

If anyone, including Evil Geniuses' own roster, was asked how they saw 2023 play out, having this group win Champions was not on the cards.

“Yesterday, I was asked about what I want to be remembered for, what this team should be remembered for,” potter said. “One thing that I want to be remembered for is the hard work we put in.”

“I was asked earlier this year if I saw us winning… it's just such a dream. It just [seemed] so far away. This is pretty incredible.”

And now that they have that Champions trophy in hand, Evil Geniuses' only mission is to complete that which Acend Acend Inactive ALIVE Gilad Hakim musashi Alessio Xhaferi pyrolll Artur Minin cullumx Nikolaj Cullum Andersen chiwa Egor Stepanyuk , FNATIC FNATIC Europe Unranked Sayonara Ștefan Mîtcu stand-in Boaster Jake Howlett kaajak Kajetan Haremski Chronicle Timofey Khromov Alfajer Emir Ali Beder , and LOUD LOUD Brazil Unranked dgzin Douglas Silva v1nny Vínicius Gonçalves pANcada Bryan Luna tuyz Arthur Andrade cauanzin Cauan Pereira could not: build their own dynasty. Can they do it?

“Absolutely,” said Boostio.

The 2023 Valorant World Champions. (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)