woxic stars as Eternal Fire defeat Liquid

Eternal Fire have defeated Liquid in a two-map series, winning Vertigo (16-13) and Inferno (16-11). Özgür “⁠woxic⁠” Eker was dominant in the match, amassing 34 kills on Vertigo and 31 on Inferno, averaging a 1.78 rating.

Eternal Fire keep their ESL Pro League playoff dream alive by getting a 2-0 win, with a game against Movistar Riders awaiting them on the final day of play.

On the other end, Liquid have squandered an early chance to guarantee a spot among the top three, but are still in the running to qualify for the playoffs. The North Americans will next take on Cloud9 on Sunday in hopes of grabbing a third win to keep themselves in playoff contention.

After yesterday’s struggles on the map, Liquid curiously decided to start on the Terrorist side of Eternal Fire‘s Vertigo pick. Jonathan “⁠EliGE⁠” Jablonowski delivered Liquid the pistol round with a quad-kill, but Eternal Fire immediately responded with a round of their own. The Turkish squad took a 5-2 lead, with woxic having a great start to the game with several multi-kills, but the lead didn’t last long. Liquid soon equalized the score and looked like they were about to win the half, but Eternal Fire replied with a crucial round in which they were armed with just pistols to edge out the half 8-7.

The second half was an increasingly scrappy affair with both teams struggling to take the game into their hands, losses against pistols and individual miss-plays the story of the half. The teams traded rounds in the opening few, before Josh “⁠oSee⁠” Ohm‘s missed shots at 10-10 cost Liquid. Their economy was broken and they went down 10-13, with the teams trading rounds after that. woxic and Ismailcan “⁠XANTARES⁠” Dörtkardeş provided the crucial moment of the map, as their two hero AK-47’s provided two entry-kills to put the Turkish side up to map point and cripple Liquid‘s economy, eventually closing out the map 16-13.

Liquid got off to a hot start on Inferno, negating Eternal Fire‘s pistol-round win with a seven-round streak. With the scoreline looking bleak for the Turks, XANTARES delivered a triple-kill that completely flipped the game’s momentum. Eternal Fire came back to win the half 8-7, with woxic putting up 21 kills at halftime, including a stunning 1vs2 clutch.

The second half began with Eternal Fire coming out on top of the force-buy wars as they raced to a 13-9 lead in no time. A pistol rush on the A site broke the Liquid economy, leading to them garnering just two rounds on their CT side, and from there another incredible performance by woxic proved too much to handle for Liquid as they lost the map 11-16.