After coming into the Overwatch League Stage 2 Playoffs as the number 2 seed, a C9 and some costly mistakes would lead to the London Spitfire being eliminated in a surprising upset by the Hangzhou Spark.
The C9 meme, as any Overwatch fan in-the-know should be aware of refers to when a team has basically won the fight, but loses the point by getting off of it or not having anyone on in the first place, usually caused by overcommitting to the fight.
It first came about all the way back in 2016 during a match between Cloud9 and Afreeca Freecs Blue in Apex Season 2, when Cloud9 had three C9s in one match.
The meme has become ingrained in Overwatch and it once again reared it’s head during the London Spitfire’s match against the Hangzhou Spark.
The Spitfire faced off against the Spark in the first round of the Stage 2 playoffs of Thursday, May 9.
Cloud9 gonna Cloud9
On the first stage of Oasis to begin the playoff match it seemed like the Spitfire had City Center in the bag after a back-and-forth round to Hangzhou.
It would come down to the final fight and at first, the Spitfire positioned themselves in a very dominant position on the point, basically daring the Spark to come to them.
Except, instead of staying on the point to ensure the capture, the Spitfire went to try and finish off the remaining members of the Spark and got a little overenthusiastic.
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No one from the Excelsior remained on the point and the match was far enough into overtime to end almost as soon as they stepped off, giving the first stage to the Shock.
London couldn’t get it together
Even though the Spitfire would manage to come back and take Oasis from the Spark, that would be the only map they would take during the match.
Hangzhou went on to dominate Blizzard World, Hanamura and Watchpoint: Gibraltar to move on to the Semi Finals against the San Francisco shock with a 3-1 win.
The Spark were so dominant in the final three maps, that London were unable to get a single map point after taking Oasis.
London certainly weren’t expecting to be knocked out in the first round, and now the Spitfire have to regroup and figure out what went wrong before the beginning of Stage 3.
