T1 T1 Korea Rank #2 stax Kim Gu-taek (김구택) Meteor Kim Tae-oh (김태오) Sylvan Go Young-sup (고영섭) BuZz Yu Byeong-cheol (유병철) iZu Ham Woo-ju (함우주) took their second win of 2025, besting former champions Paper Rex Paper Rex Asia-Pacific Rank #3 mindfreak Aaron Leonhart Jinggg Wang Jing Jie f0rsakeN Jason Susanto d4v41 Khalish Rusyaidee something Ilya Petrov 2-1 at the Pacific Kickoff quarterfinals.

This win breaks an almost two-year long spell of victories from Paper Rex over T1. Since April 2023, Paper Rex have won six flawless matches against T1, coming into today's match holding a 12-0 record over the Koreans.

“It's so great to finally get that win for the T1 organization. Historically we lost to them 2-0. Great game indeed,” BuZz said after the match.

The bout was expected to be one of the most promising of Kickoff due to each team's offseason. T1 had become a strong contender thanks to a number of hot pickups while Paper Rex, who have not touched their roster since something joined, seemed back to their true selves at the Radiant Asia Invitational.

VCT Pacific Stage with T1 colors Photo by VCT Pacific

The match delivered, but only heated up in the final moments of Fracture. While T1 dominantly won their Bind pick, 13-6, Fracture was much more tightly contested. f0rsakeN came online on attack, dropping 17 players in just eight rounds.

The highlight that guaranteed a decider was unquestionably f0rsakeN 's chaotic three kills outside B, which included a kill through a smoke. That round put Paper Rex on map point and allowed them to swiftly bring about Split.

The final map swung in T1's favor, and was the closest map of the match. In the penultimate round, Meteor gunned down all of Paper Rex by himself, leaving the door open for his team to win the final map 13-11.

And while Meteor's ace may have been the highlight of the map, he was on par with his team for frags, but had the lowest ADR and rating. It was stax who guided the team to victory with a 1.64 rating and 24 kills for a +11 differential. His Split performance also made him the man of the match, averaging a 1.25 rating across the three-map fight.

Those last two kills were an accident… surely…

This win is also the second for T1 this year, and the 11th for the roster overall. T1 haven't dropped a match since they beat CREST GAMING Zst CREST GAMING Zst Japan Rank #8 Brofeld bazz KEN Kapi sakurai at the Red Bull Home Ground 5 APAC Play-ins. Even so, the team thinks they're still finding their footing.

“The BOOM series was our first game, so some of the players had stage jitters. I don't think we were as well prepared as we were today,” BuzZ said in the post-match interview. “We were able to spot some holes in our plays, some things we didn't do in scrims, so we were able to tighten tights up with the extra day that we had. We're pretty satisfied with how today went down.”

While BuzZ also thinks the worst is behind them — the team thought Paper Rex would be their highest hurdle come Kickoff and come 2025 — now is not the time to let up. There is still a long path to Thailand.

With T1's victory, they are now in the upper semifinals. They will next face TALON TALON Asia-Pacific Rank #13 Crws Thanamethk Mahatthananuyut JitBoyS Jittana Nokngam primmie Papaphat Sriprapha ban Joseph Seungmin Oh Governor Peter No or Global Esports Global Esports Asia-Pacific Rank #37 UdoTan Go Kyung-won (고경원) Kr1stal Savva Fedorov kellyS Kelly Sedillo Papi Federico Evangelista Deryeon Derrick Yee , who play in a few days. Should they win that match, T1 will still need one more win to secure their place at the next Masters.

They get about 10 days of rest now, while Paper Rex have until the weekend to prepare for a very long lower bracket run. The team returns on January 26 to play ZETA DIVISION ZETA DIVISION Japan Rank #2 Dep Yuma Hashimoto SugarZ3ro Shota Watanabe CLZ Hikaru Mizutani SyouTa Shota Aoki Xdll Yuto Mizomori in the first round of the lower bracket, and have to win three more Bo3s and one Bo5 if they are to reach the grand final and Thailand.

However, T1 are expecting Paper Rex to run through that lower bracket and rematch them come February. BuZz expects his team and PRX to rematch in the grand final and make it to Masters Bangkok.

One man army.

VCT Pacific Kickoff now goes on a break for a few days, and will return with the next round of upper bracket matches. There are still two bouts left in the upper quarterfinals, which will take place Jan. 25.

The next matches of the Pacific Kickoff are: