“It’s a story as long as time,” said Austin “Cap” Walsh at the beginning of game three in the best of five grand finals, when Gaimin Gladiators were a win away from becoming the first team to claim the Esports World Cup title in the Dota 2 category.
Gaimin Gladiators and Team Liquid rolled back the tape at Riyadh Masters and gave the fans a full replay of the 2023 year. Both teams came to Riyadh prepared for fast paced Dota. Liquid and GG had some of the fastest games played in the tournament, but Gladiators had all their engines turned up higher than anyone else in the tournament.
Coming into the Riyadh Masters 2024 grand finals, Gamin Gladiators and Team Liquid had a history of five other grand finals already played against each other. The score was 5-0 in favour of GG, who seem to have figured out Team Liquid in the smallest details possible.
Gaimin Gladiators vs Team Liquid
Their sixth direct confrontation in the final act of the tournament started with Team Liquid banning GG’s most successful heroes in Riyadh. Gaimin boasted an 87.50% winrate on Chaos Knight ( in 8 games played) and 83.33% win rate on Brewmaster. But banning these heroes opened the option for GG to start the series with a Broodmother carry and simply run over their adversaries. Game one closed before the 25-minute mark with a kill score of 18 to 4 for GG.
Brrodmother made it to the pick phase in game two as well, however, GG sent it to offlane, while their carry choice was Alchemist. The concept was the same, but Liquid were able to keep the hopes alive and push Gaimin to a late game scenario. Even so, their line-up felt completely overwhelmed.
A game away from the title, Gaimin allowed Liquid to run a mid lane Tiny, but it was perhaps more of a trap. In the end, Gaimin Gladiators were one of the very few teams to have figured out how to beat the hero and they proved it one last time against Liquid.
Riyadh Masters 2024 represents the first championship title for Gaimin Gladiators, who seem to have finally found their stride once again and are heading to The International 2024 after a very dominant tournament run at the inaugural edition of Esports World Cup.
