M80 head to the BLAST R6 Major Munich as America’s main hope. In the last two months, the green lineup has only lost one out of fourteen matches played, winning North America's second stage in the process.
While the team's recent form has been bright and is a valid point to believe the players can produce a championship run in Munich, we can’t say we haven’t been here before. The last time M80 won a North America League split, the team was knocked out of Copenhagen’s Swiss Stage after a 1-3 run which included defeats against SCARZ and their regional fellows Soniqs and Spacestation.
Only six months later after the team's disappointing performance in Denmark, the players’ second-place finish in the second split was followed by two winless runs in Atlanta and Sao Paulo. In May 2024 and after the arrivals of Gabriel “cameram4n” Hespanhol, Ben “CTZN” McMillan, and Adam “nudl” Hryceniak, the team’s second-place finish in the North America League 2024 Stage 1 was followed by a quarterfinal finish at the BLAST R6 Major Manchester. Five months later, they missed out on Montreal and finished in 13th - 16th at the Six Invitational 2025.
Long story short, M80 has a trajectory of regional success that's followed by international deception. Therefore, it's very hard to trust their championship hopes; even now, when the team includes a three-time world champion and four BLAST R6 Major winners.
The man who has gone through it all
Despite all of the changes, signings, ups, and downs, Leonardo “Kyno” Figueiredo has gone through absolutely everything. Since joining XSET, the Brazilian has grown both as a professional and as a player, competing at multiple international and regional tournaments and helping the roster with the same energy even when the player was benched months before the Six Invitational 2024.
“Back on XSET I was very unprofessional, the whole team was very unprofessional, we didn't take everything as seriously as we should of, and I feel like maybe if we did we could have taken a trophy home. Even when we picked up Spoit and Iconic it felt like it was the same of everything, maybe the environment we were on led to things being a little bit unprofessional," explained the Brazilian in a pre-BLAST R6 Major Munich interview with SiegeGG.
M80’s last dance with Spoit was at the Six Invitational 2025, one month after picking up the former Beastcoast duo Ayden “dfuzr” Gabari and Shaun “Gunnar” Pottorff. Despite a promising start, the Americans’ lost it after Matheus “Budega” Figueiredo and Igor “Vivas” Vivas were “ejected” from the competition after an altercation with DarkZero Esports. One day later, the roster was knocked out of the competition by CAG Osaka.
"It was probably the one tournament that hurt me the most because I knew how capable we were," Kyno explained. "I can't blame everything on what happened because, at the end of the day, we were there for the CAG game... and we lost. Sure, the coach has crazy impact on the game, but at the end of the day we lost to ourselves, so we weren't ready."
Logically, the conclusion of the Six Invitational 2025 was followed by the opening of the transfer window. It allowed M80 to reevaluate their project and make the pertinent changes.
M80's decisions and how they shaped today’s Siege esports scene
After the events in Boston, Massachusetts, the organization parted ways with both Budega and Vivas as well as Jaidan “Packer” Franz, who had joined the team alongside the former MIBR coach from CL4L after qualifying for the BLAST R6 Major Montreal. As Spoit also left the team to join Shopify Rebellion, M80 had experienced four departures in a matter of a few weeks. It was time for rebuilding.
Reinforcing or even creating from scratch a lineup is no easy task, but it certainly isn’t as hard when you’re M80 – the options are wider for multiple factors, one of them being organizational strength. If we learned something from previous transfer windows is that M80 don’t mind splashing the cash to bring big dogs, and that’s what happened: the team’s first piece was the purchase of the PSG Talon head coach and three-time world champion Fabian “Fabian” Hällsten.
With the coach dilemma being sorted, it was time to build the lineup for the upcoming season. Curiously enough, North America’s most exciting talent, Zack “Stompn” Lamb, was already in M80 – in their academy roster – and promoting him to the main lineup was probably the most logic thing to do, especially after Spoit’s departure. It was a match made in heaven, M80 wouldn’t be just getting a player with social presence, but also someone with crazy fragging abilities.
"Funnily enough we tried him out," Kyno admitted. "We played a whole scrim with him and SpiriTz. Our whole thought process was like we were making kind of a list of who we wanted, we needed two players, we knew we needed an entry for sure, so he could fit on that role, and then we needed more of a backbone player and IGL," the Brazilian added.
Although signing the 18-year-old was on the cards, Kyno revealed there were other options. "Stompn was at the very, very top of our list, but we were very set on Gaven and Hotancold if they didn't stick together."
Back then, Stompn was stealing the show as he was the region's hot talent. However, Unwanted had stolen the fans’ hearts with a fourth-place finish at the Six Invitational 2025. While the players wanted to sign for an organization that would allow them to continue playing together, fate simply didn’t want it to happen and the members went different ways.
In the end, M80 ended up signing Matthew “Hotancold” Stevens and Gaven “Gaveni” Black, and America’s most exciting talent crossed the pond to join G2 Esports.
"Their main plan was sticking with Unwanted if they could find an organization; they couldn't find it so at the end of the day we just got them two. But if we didn't pick them up, if they managed to stick together, we probably would have gone with Stompn... which is kinda crazy thinking about it now."
Long story short, there's an alternate universe where M80 is heading into the BLAST R6 Major Munich with Stompn in the roster. However, in our reality, that hasn't happened, which means we will see the Amerian facing off his former home.
Fabian's addition
Not all teams have the chance to add an international champion to their squad, so imagine the odds off adding a three-time world champion. Although the arrivals of Hotancold and Gaveni stole the show before RE:L0:AD, everyone was excited to see Fabian's impact on the team after a year coaching PSG Talon.
"It's a change, I have been with Budega and Vigas for three years before Fabian, so it's a good change. Sometimes it's better for both parties to go separate ways and try something new. Fabian has been helping me a lot and the team fundamentally, he really is truly professional when he has to be, but he also knows when to be a goofball so that helps the vibes in the team, making sure we're not just working, working, working, non stop, and actually enjoying ourselves."
Strategically, we have seen a very strong M80, especially during the second stage of the season. They proved to be capable of adapting to countless of situations, with a great variety of operator bans and a very well-worked map pool. In fact, that may be one of their best qualities heading into the BLAST R6 Major Munich. This, and recent form make M80 one of the teams to watch in Munich; if they are able to keep their North America League 2025 Stage 2 momentum alive, they could finally set a precedent.
M80 during the season
Although M80's recent form has been brilliant, with 13 wins in their last 14 matches, it's fair to say the team have also had to face some lows this season. In Stage 1, despite a solid group phase run, the team missed out on the Siege X Esports World Cup 2025 after three back-to-back defeats against Shopify Rebellion, Spacestation, and Wildcard. It was a big blow to take and a huge reality check for the team.
"I feel like the only solid explanation is nerves. We played a decent game against OXG in the first game of playoffs, and the Shopify game, they didn't play well either, but I feel I believed we had that game under control and we threw that, we threw so many unlosable rounds. That game got in our head."
After the defeat against Shopify Rebellion, the team had already lost it. The team fell into a spiral of negativity, as Kyno admitted "the next morning we're still talking about the (Shopify) loss, that can't happen in esports, we were way too deep into it instead of putting our energy into the next game, the SSG game."
Kyno also admitted "our fundamentals were awful" as they "would be playing the round perfectly, get the opening picks, get two, get three, but at the end we would be so like nervous, we were kinda playing not to lose, instead of playing it to win, so we were just giving them either picks back or play the round awful."
Every team can fall once — as long as they learn from it. And that’s exactly what M80 did. After Stage 1, the players focused on improving their fundamentals, which quickly elevated their results. They went on to win the North America League 2025 Stage 2 with 13 wins and only one loss — to Spacestation in their first Upper Bracket match. Despite that, the team’s mentality was stronger than ever.
"One of the most important things in esports is losing. We had an undefeated run in group stage and sometimes that isn't a good thing. You know, all of those teams are losing a game and they have a very important talk, that one talk were it either turns the team around, fixes a lot of issues... sometimes it's better to have something worse happen than something good because if it's good or decent, you're just going to sit there and stay plateau, but if you lose and you talk about it, and you work on things together, you can become even better."
"I feel like that SSG game, the SSG loss was so important for us, because we sat there, we talked about our issues, we kind of figured it out and it clicked for us, I was so confident after the game, I knew we were going to win, I feel like that loss opened all of our minds, we were just let's lock in, let's fix this, let's work together, let's just do this," Kyno concluded.
Munich is M80’s next chance to prove they truly have what it takes to make a deep international run — something we haven’t seen in years. It’s their opportunity to write a new chapter, improve, and keep building as the Six Invitational 2026 rapidly approaches.
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