In Counter-Strike 2, an outsider has just defeated the top favorite. This marks the first defeat after 30 consecutive wins.
What kind of unstoppable team is this? In Counter-Strike 2, Team Vitality is currently considered the best team in the game. The lineup consisting of apEX, ZywOo, ropz, flameZ, and mezii appeared nearly unstoppable for many eSports fans.
In recent months, Team Vitality has managed to win 30 LAN matches in a row, which is the second-longest winning streak in the history of the shooter. Additionally, the team has most recently won all major tournaments:
- Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2025
- ESL Pro League Season 21
- BLAST Open Spring 2025
- ESL Grand Slam Season 5
- Intel Extreme Masters Melbourne 2025
- BLAST Rivals Spring 2025
- Intel Extreme Masters Dallas 2025
Even in the currently ongoing BLAST Austin Major, the team led by star player ZywOo is one of the top favorites for the title, with the winning team expected to receive $500,000 in prize money. However, on the way to success, Vitality had to face an unexpected defeat.
Outsider defeats top favorite
What happened now at the Austin Major? The Austin Major 2025 is currently in “Stage 3”, which is the third and penultimate phase of the tournament. A total of 16 teams from different regions compete against each other. The 8 best teams qualify for the playoffs.
On the first day of the third phase, Team Vitality played a best-of-1 on the map “Inferno” against the Brazilian team “Legacy” – and surprisingly lost. Legacy won decisively with a score of 13:3.
The pistol round was actually quite reliably won by Team Vitality, who started on the CT side. flamez got the first kill of the match, followed by 2 kills from ZywOo, before ropz and apEX eliminated the remaining players from Legacy.
However, Legacy was able to win 8 rounds in a row and remained unfazed even when Team Vitality won individual rounds.
For Vitality, the defeat currently has no consequences. They also managed to win their second game of Stage 3 against Nemiga Gaming with a score of 13:6, so the tournament is not yet over, and the team still has chances to qualify for the playoffs.
Why shouldn’t Legacy even be at the tournament? Legacy actually failed to qualify for the Austin Major. In the final of the South American qualifying tournament, Legacy lost to the team from BESTIA, which thus qualified for the tournament.
However, BESTIA encountered problems with the visas for the players and could not present them by a set deadline to the tournament organizers. They then announced on X that BESTIA would therefore not participate in the Austin Major and that Legacy, as the second-place team from the region, would take their place.
Thus, Legacy has not actually qualified successfully for the Austin Major and is only in the tournament because the organizers disqualified BESTIA.
It is a different story for FaZe. The team made it to the Austin Major on their own and before the start of the tournament reworked their roster significantly: the Ukrainian Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyljev is now part of the team: Two of the best players to have ever played Counter-Strike are now on the same team
