To start off the day's matches, South Korea's Afreeca Freecs Blue and Europe's Rogue returned from the Asia Pacific Premier (APAC for short) over in China to compete in South Korea's OGN Overwatch APEX. At APAC, Rogue finished first and ended Afreeca Freecs Blue's tournament run in the quarterfinals, so this was a fateful rematch for both teams.
Rogue won out 3-0 but it is no understatement to say that Afreeca put up a strong fight. On Eichenwald, Jung "Recry" Taek Hyun played an incredible Hanzo and was able to take out key members from Rogue on most major points for his team, allowing them to push right through some of the more dangerous parts of the map. However, once Rogue grouped up, it constantly slammed the Freecs down to the pavement for incredibly clean and dominating victories on Nepal, Eichenwald and the Temple of Anubis, which happens to be one of Rogue's best maps. Afreeca Freecs Blue is good, but Rogue is just that much better.
In what looked to be a David versus Goliath matchup, South Korea's MVP Space took to the stage for the third time to face off against America's NRG eSports, who had recently finished in the semifinals of APAC. With MVP Space's weaknesses being exposed left and right already, it was no surprise that NRG was able to take a 3-0 sweep of the South Korean team. While MVP Space seemed to put up a surprisingly strong fight on Lijiang Tower, the rest of the series exploited many of its same weaknesses.
Even the efforts of MVP Space's Nam "Poro" Woo Seok couldn't save the team with his heroic dives into the backline on Reaper or the few times he was able to outduel Daniel "GODS" Graeser from NRG on McCree. NRG completely dominated these maps with the help of Match MVP and famous Genji streamer Brandon "Seagull" Larned.