Fnatic will meet LOUD again at Valorant Champions, this time in an elimination match. Jake ‘Boaster’ Howlett believes that his team will give a much better account of themselves this time around.
As Valorant Champions 2023 heads over to the Kia Forum for its final stages, all eyes are on the upcoming elimination match between Fnatic, this year’s No.1 team, and LOUD, the reigning world champions.
The two teams met in the first round of the playoffs, with the Brazilians running out convincing 2-0 winners. With no margin for error, Fnatic fended off elimination against FUT Esports and DRX to set up a grudge match against LOUD, who lost to Paper Rex in the upper bracket semi-finals.
“We want to play them [LOUD] again,” Boaster said after beating DRX. “It only feels right to do this lower bracket run and get some revenge on the team that knocked us to the lower bracket.”
The Fnatic captain stated that he learned a valuable lesson against LOUD and DRX, acknowledging that the team displayed the wrong mentality in those two matches. He also took his share of the blame for the team’s failure to convert 5v4 advantages.
“I think the similar thing with the LOUD and the DRX games was that we were thinking, like, ‘This is our game to win,’” he said. “Next time, we won’t make the same mistake.
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“We’ve just gone to make sure that when we get those 5v4s we don’t give them away. That was the problem in the DRX game as well. Just need to figure out that mid-rounding from me. We’ll win. That’s what I’m hoping for.”
Fnatic and LOUD have a score to settle
This will be only the third match on record between Fnatic and LOUD, though the two teams have already developed a rivalry on the server.
The first bout between them was the VCT LOCK//IN final in São Paulo, a five-map thriller that peaked at over 1.4 million viewers.
With August 16’s playoff series between LOUD and Fnatic drawing over 840,000 viewers, many are hopeful that the upcoming elimination match will crack 1 million concurrent viewers.
Valorant Champions 2023’s highest viewership peak so far came during the match between Paper Rex and LOUD, which had over 857,000 viewers at one point, according to data firm Esports Charts.
