Istanbul Wildcats crowned EMEA Masters 2023 champions

The EMEA Masters 2023 has culminated. The most consistent and best team of the tournament, the Istanbul Wildcats, were crowned champions after defeating Unicorns of Love SE in an exciting final with a score of 3-2.

There is no doubt that this is a more than deserved championship, as the team only lost the first match they played in the whole tournament against Geekay Esports. From then on, the team won five matches in the Group Stage, and three played in the playoffs.

Moreover, this is the first time a Turkish team has won the EMEA Masters in its first tournament participation. In addition, they had a great tournament that ended with a reverse sweep that became the first in the history of the finals of this tournament.

Istanbul Wildcats crowned champions of the EMEA Masters 2023

After an extremely intense and exciting grand final, with few fans in France, the Istanbul Wildcats became EMEA Masters 2023 champions after applying a spectacular reverse sweep against Unicorns of Love Sexy Edition.

The Wildcats started 0-2 down in the series, and when everyone thought it would be a comfortable victory for Unicorns of Love SE, they reacted and completed a very nice reverse sweep and ended up winning 3-2.

As mentioned, the Wildcats’ road to the tournament is one of mere recognition. They started the EMEA Masters with a 0-1 loss to Geekay Esports. However, this woke the team up, and they reeled off five consecutive wins against Zero Tenacity (x2), Los Heretics (x2), and Geekay Esports.

Then, they had to face LDLC OL in the quarterfinals in the playoffs. The Wildcats suffered a Min-gyu “Peach” Lee in this series, who had a spectacular first game. After that, however, the German team ran out of gas as the Turks started to wake up and managed to win all three games in a row to take the 3-1 victory. Hyeon-woo “BAO” Jeong carried his team in this victory and sent them to the tournament’s semifinals.

Then the Wildcats had to apply the same dose in the tournament’s semifinals against SK Gaming Prime because they started by losing the first game, just like in the quarterfinals. This time BAO had the help of Yoon “Destroy” Jeong-min to lead his team to a 3-1 victory to secure their ticket to the grand finals.

Grand Final

Finally, in the Grand Final match, the Wildcats boys, again led by BAO and Destroy, recovered from a series they had almost lost. Unicorns of Love SE started with resounding victories in the first two games of the Grand Final and therefore had a triple-matchpoint.

However, this only activated the Turks, who managed to apply the first reverse sweep in the history of an EMEA Masters grand final to be crowned tournament champions. Also, as expected, BAO took home the MVP award for the tournament’s grand final.

Header: EMEA Masters