After four years, it has happened again. G2 Esports -- and Fabian "Fabian" Hällsten -- are world champions.
Their victory today came after an impressive grand-final against w7m esports, which was not one-sided, but certainly confident enough to be considered dominant.
“I think the map ban phase was kind of expected,” began Fabian in a post-match interview with SiegeGG. “We didn’t really care which one (of Clubhouse or Border) they picked. … We had a 5-7 result and if their best map and our worst are that close, we knew that we had them in the next three.”
Sure enough, following that 7-5 victory for w7m on Clubhouse, it was the G2 show, as they won 7-2 on Bank and 7-4 on Kafe before finally getting a challenge on the final map of Oregon -- which they eventually won 8-6.
For Fabian, who has won two world championship titles before, winning this Six Invitational as a coach certainly felt different.
“The adrenaline kick isn’t there when you’re a coach -- I was so confident,” he said. “When you stand outside of the game, you get a different outlook on how things are going down and the way things are, like, progressing during a game.”
Throughout the tournament, Benjamin "Benjamaster" Dereli was the standout performer for G2 Esports and finished with some impressive personal accolades.
Midway through the second map in the grand-final, he broke the record for the most kills at one Six Invitational, eventually finishing at a total of 323. He was two kills away in the grand-final from beating the single-match kill record at a Six Invitational as well and finished as the SiegeGG MVP for the event.
This was all just 45 days after having played his first match with G2.
“The scrim results from the start was really good,” recalled Benjamaster, sharing that it was the first sign that he and G2 had something potentially special together.
“Normally when you join a team, you scrim before, but I didn’t -- they just signed me.”
Speaking on stage after his win, he was to the point and deservedly called himself the necessary upgrade for G2 to win the title. He had previously also slyly tweeted that fans should not consider Ben "CTZN" McMillan as “the problem”, but should consider himself the “solution”.
“When it comes to [Benjamaster], I was looking at two players,” revealed Fabian. “The boys preferred Benja and I honestly don’t care in the end because they need to find a player that they like to play with.”
“Credit to the boys that they put their foot down on who they wanted. So, in the end, we went with the correct choice -- I think it’s hard to say anything different now, is it?”
Fabian, Benjamaster, and the rest of G2 will now enter the annals of Siege esports history, with the former praised as “the GOAT” by Julio "JULIO" Giacomelli, the captain of the very team they just beat.
