Paper Rex send LOUD home 2-0

Paper Rex Paper Rex Asia-Pacific Rank #3 mindfreak Aaron Leonhart Jinggg Wang Jing Jie f0rsakeN Jason Susanto d4v41 Khalish Rusyaidee something Ilya Petrov defeated LOUD LOUD Brazil Rank #2 dgzin Douglas Silva v1nny Vínicius Gonçalves pANcada Bryan Luna tuyz Arthur Andrade cauanzin Cauan Pereira with an unexpected 2-0 scoreline in the Masters Madrid lower bracket semi-finals. PRX will now advance to the lower bracket finals, where they will battle against Sentinels Sentinels North America Rank #4 N4RRATE Marshall Massey bang Sean Bezerra Zellsis Jordan Montemurro zekken Zachary Patrone johnqt Mohamed Amine Ouarid for a chance to face off against Gen.G Gen.G Korea Rank #1 Foxy9 Jung Jae-sung (정재성) t3xture Kim Na-ra (김나라) Munchkin Byeon Sang-beom (변상범) yoman Chae Young-moon (채영문) Karon Kim Won-tae (김원태) in the grand finals.

Meanwhile, LOUD has been eliminated from the event with a fourth-place finish.

Prior to the match, PRX player d4v41 was asked where he would rank PRX now that they've made it into the playoffs.

“I think we have to give credit to ourselves. I think we're 10/10 now,” d4v41 said, “I'm pretty excited to play LOUD, and you know what L stands for? It means Less , so it means Less is coming for us again today.”

The first map of the series went to Ascent, where both teams played their signature unorthodox compositions. something was on Gecko while Quick once again took to Phoenix.

Ascent began with an explosive start. f0rsakeN nabbed a quick 4K on PRX's pistol round to secure his team the lead. But on their bonus round, qck stole away a 1v2 and diffused the spike with just 0.64 seconds on the clock.

The next round saw something back on the Gecko attack-side Operator. Although he didn't get the most value out of the sniper rifle, it was still instrumental in clearing space for PRX and leading them into a 6-6 halftime.

In the second half of the map, LOUD managed to briefly overtake the game 10-9 with a four-round win streak, but Paper Rex soon demanded retribution. The Pacific stars went on their own four-round win streak to secure themselves the first map of the series on LOUD's map pick.

“I think LOUD is one of the most intelligent and consistent teams in the circuit. We don't even know what they're going to pick in the map veto, they can play almost all seven maps,” said PRX coach alecks after Ascent, “We just had to focus on ourselves this game. I think we haven't had the best run, so we really just wanted to get this—get ourselves more aligned if anything.”

Sunset was another map where LOUD played Phoenix and PRX played Gecko. After LOUD won the pistol round, PRX committed to and won a thrifty retake. Then, in a series of events reminiscent of the earlier Sentinels-Gen.G game on Split, LOUD won their thrifty, and then PRX won another thrifty.

But it was LOUD who ultimately won the final thrifty to secure themselves the lead 3-2 going into the Sunset's first gun round, after which Paper Rex called a timeout to stabilize themselves and their gameplay.

In yet another thrifty, round seven saw Less win a 1v4 (with an Ace!) but lose the round after running out of time to plant the spike.

But it was round 17 that sealed the nail in LOUD's coffin. After winning two consecutive rounds to close PRX's lead to a 9-7, LOUD finally had PRX on a half-buy. But if any lesson is to be taken from today's games, it's that you can never count a team out on a save.

After LOUD successfully retook B site from Paper Rex, the round seemed secured with only mindfreak alive in B main.

But then Less and qck peak through their own Viper orb only to be met with two shots in the head. Feeling the pressure, saadhak began diffusing while cauanzin moved forward to confront the enemy Viper.

mindfreak peaked left and got the kill on Saadhak, then marked his 1v4 thrifty clutch with cauanzin's death.

LOUD immediately called for a timeout, but they were hopeless in the face of PRX's relentless aggression. Two rounds later, f0rsakeN scored a ridiculous first blood on cauanzin all the way from Mid Bottom with the help of a Sage wall set up by d4v41.

Not to be outdone, something snagged himself a 3K on his now infamous attack-side Gecko Operator in the final round of the series to send LOUD home once and for all.

“I mean, technically on Sunset we don't really have duelists, but man just loves to op, y'know?” d4v4i said in his post-match interview, “It doesn't matter what agent you put him on, he's just like, ‘Oh I'm gonna op, I'm gonna op, I'm gonna op.'”

As for PRX's game plan going into the series, d4v41 referred back to LOUD player Less.

“We matched up against LOUD…and I think our strat is probably just counter Less,” said d4v4i, “He gave us a lot of trouble last time, so yeah, as long as Less doesn't play well, I think we're good to go.”

But d4v41 also had some parting words for PRX's next opponent Sentinels.

“They've been playing very well,” he conceded, “But I think this time we have to prove that the PRX bundle is better than the Sentinels bundle.”

Luckily for d4v41 and his teammates, they won't have to wait very long to duke it out with Sentinels over which team has the superior in-game merchandise. PRX will play against the tournament's last remaining Americas representative in just one day for a chance to clinch an all-Pacific grand final.