Rio home teams winless after round 1 as Vitality beat Imperial; EG survive IHC scare

All of the Brazilian teams have been sent to the 0-1 pool following their opening matches.

The first Swiss round of the IEM Rio Major Challenger Stage is nearing its end with just one match between Cloud9 and fnatic left to be played, and thus far not a single Brazilian team has managed to record a win despite roaring fans cheering on their every kill.

Imperial had the most supporters behind them heading into their match against Vitality, the fans in the crowd even standing and singing the Brazilian national anthem ahead of the match, but it proved not to be enough to shut down a Vitality that came out of the gates all guns blazing.

On the B stream, Evil Geniuses were put on the back foot by IHC on Nuke, but managed to recover from a slow start thanks to strong AWPing from Tsvetelin "⁠CeRq⁠" Dimitrov in the latter portions of the CT side before they closed things out, 16-9.

ZywOo put a halt to a comeback effort from Imperial

Vitality eviscerated Imperial in the first half of Inferno, an impenetrable defense leaving the Brazilian team no avenue into bombsites in what ended up a 13-2 battering that silenced the home crowd. Despite losing the pistol following the side swap, Imperial managed a forcebuy win and began chipping away at that deficit, seemingly coming alive with the crowd behind them.

It looked as if the comeback was truly on when Imperial were on the brink of pulling off what looked to be an unwinnable 3vs4 retake on the B bombsite, but a 1vs3 clutch from Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut shut down those hopes at the last moment, and from there Vitality regained control to close out the map in the following round.

IEM Rio Major 2022 Challengers StageBest of 1 VitalityMatchpage 16 9 31st October 2022 Imperial 16Inferno 9

IHC got off to a stellar start on the T side of Nuke in their matchup against Evil Geniuses, looking poised for an upset of their own as they raced to a 7-0 lead off the back of a strong individual performance from Tengis "⁠sk0R⁠" Batjargal. That edge began to rapidly dwindle once CeRq came alive on the AWP though, and the Bulgarian sniper continued to pick apart the Mongolian team for the rest of the half to lead his side in an eight-round spree to gain the lead.

Once on the CT side, worries of Evil Geniuses faltering faded away in rapid fashion. The North American-European combine established their dominance on the proceedings and didn't let up, carrying momentum through to the end of the map to take home a 16-9 victory.

IEM Rio Major 2022 Challengers StageBest of 1 Evil GeniusesMatchpage 16 9 31st October 2022 IHC 16Nuke 9 Group Challengers Stage 1W - 0L Bad News Eagles OG GamerLegion MOUZ Vitality Evil Geniuses BIG 0W - 0L fnatic Cloud9 0W - 1L FURIA Imperial IHC Outsiders 9z Grayhound 00NATION Evil Geniuses #21 Timothy 'autimatic' TaVincent 'Brehze' CayonteTsvetelin 'CeRq' DimitrovSanzhar 'neaLaN' IskhakovJadan 'HexT' Postma Imperial #18 Gabriel 'FalleN' ToledoFernando 'fer' AlvarengaRicardo 'boltz' PrassMarcelo 'chelo' CespedesVinicius 'VINI' Figueiredo Tsvetelin 'CeRq' Dimitrov Age: 22 Team: Evil Geniuses Rating 1.0: 1.10 Maps played: 1224 KPR: 0.73 DPR: 0.62 Vitality #2 Dan 'apEX' MadesclairePeter 'dupreeh' RasmussenEmil 'Magisk' ReifMathieu 'ZywOo' HerbautLotan 'Spinx' Giladi Mathieu 'ZywOo' Herbaut Age: 21 Team: Vitality Rating 1.0: 1.27 Maps played: 1067 KPR: 0.85 DPR: 0.61 fnatic #19 Freddy 'KRIMZ' JohanssonDion 'FASHR' DerksenNico 'nicoodoz' TamjidiFredrik 'roeJ' JørgensenWilliam 'mezii' Merriman Cloud9 #5 Abay 'HObbit' KhassenovTimofey 'interz' YakushinSergey 'Ax1Le' RykhtorovDmitry 'sh1ro' SokolovVladislav 'nafany' Gorshkov IHC #47 Bat-Enkh 'kabal' BatbayarTengis 'sk0R' BatjargalTuvshintugs 'Annihilation' NyamdorjGaridmagnai 'bLitz' ByambasurenSodbayar 'Techno' Munkhbold Tengis 'sk0R' Batjargal Age: 20 Team: IHC Rating 1.0: 1.14 Maps played: 357 KPR: 0.79 DPR: 0.67