Team Canyon, composed of well-known players and influencers from the game Apex Legends, won the ESPN Esports VALORANT Invitational on Wednesday, upsetting heavy favorites Team Mirage to take home the championship in a best-of-three series. Team Mirage, made up of professionals from the world of Counter-Strike, entered the ESPN tournament with an undefeated record in tournaments since the VALORANT beta launched on April 7, winning the Code Green and T1 Invitationals in previous weeks.
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The Invitational aimed to pit the best teams from various games against each other to see who would come out on top. For the Apex Legends underdogs, their three-day run pitted them against the cream of the crop. In their group stage, they began the tournament by recording a major upset, downing the other prohibitive favorite, Team Dev, a squad featuring the creators of VALORANT itself that had been undefeated.
In the middle of Team Canyon's perfect group stage and No. 1 seed in Group B was their iceman, Justin "Kellar" Kellar, nonchalantly cleaning up game after game with his nerves of steel. Routinely throughout the event, the Canadian would find himself in outnumbered situations with the clock ticking down, only to be the last person standing when it was all said and done.
"I've never really felt nervous or the pressure when playing video games," Kellar told ESPN in an interview following his team's championship victory. "I'm confident in myself and my plays, which helps in situations that are stressful since you can't ever doubt yourself. Traveling the world and playing on LAN for multiple different games in front of crowds also helps break nerves, but I'm usually not one to ever be nervous or feel the pressure. I'm kinda lucky that way."
On a team of aggressive players who utilized the game's flashier characters, Kellar played Cypher, an intel-focused agent from Morocco. While his superstar teammates, including walking highlight machine Brandon "Aceu" Winn, were throwing themselves full-throttle into all-out gunfights with spells and explosions flying everywhere, Kellar was generally in the back or off on his own adventures, using Cypher's abilities to set up plays for his teammates by catching opponents in tripwires or spotting them on his specialized spy cameras.
Cypher is a one-man intelligence agency. His ultimate, called "Identity Theft," allows the agent to pinpoint where every enemy is located on the map at that precise moment. When a player of Kellar's skill level gets his hands on Cypher, he can take a gigantic, unknown map and make it feel like a shoebox for the opposition, where every wrong turn dooms them to a booby-trap.
"I think Cypher is a must-pick," Kellar said. "He can get a lot of info with practically no risk, which is such a big advantage in high-level games, and he can also solo anchor bombsites with his traps and cages. The amount of mind games you can do with him too are crazy. My favorite thing about playing him is that you can be super creative with your entire kit and make multiple unique plays on a dime."
After sailing through the group stage, Team Canyon set its sights on the team formed from Overwatch players, Team Heroes, in the semifinals. And although Team Heroes ace and unsung hero of the tournament Kelden "Boostio" Pupello put up 31 kills in the semifinal, it wasn't enough. Kellar put up 23 kills of his own on Cypher as his team qualified for the finals against Team Mirage.
Even though the team was unbeaten going into the grand final, Team Canyon were still seen as the major underdogs against the players coming from the world of Counter-Strike. Where Team Canyon had the flash and technical skill, they lacked some of the team coordination that Team Mirage had displayed in the opening rounds and an impressive semifinal victory over the game's developers. Their meticulous, dissecting style was seen as an almost perfect counter for a team that loved to go for big plays and outmuscle their opponents.
And as the final began, it looked like that was how things were going to play out. Team Mirage rocketed to an early lead on the first map of the best-of-three match, and weathered Canyon's attempts at a comeback. Canyon would win a round off Kellar making a clutch play under pressure or Aceu having a dazzling, individual performance, but it never resulted in enough wins to string together to overcome Mirage's slow, oppressive juggernaut.
On Haven, the next map, Team Canyon finally found their footing. Their extravagant, big-play players managed to get on the same page and generated enough momentum to take the first game of the tournament from the seemingly unbeatable squad captained by the world's first signed VALORANT pro, T1's Braxton "Brax" Pierce.
Come the third map, it almost felt as if the one loss had tripped up Mirage. Kellar and Team Canyon carried over the energy from the previous game and used it to propel them to a thrilling win over the kings of VALORANT's beta. In particular, Lucas "Mendo" Håkansson came alive against Team Mirage, getting MVP of the finals on his Sage with the second-most kills in the climactic match with 61 while also having the least amount of deaths of anyone at 39. By the end of the grand finale, Team Canyon had adopted Kellar's steely nerve, every close round being clutched or saved by someone on the team.
To Kellar, the title win early in VALORANT's lifetime was sweet, but competing in the tournament was even sweeter. He not only got to try his skills against players he has looked up to since he was a child, he got to beat them and turn them into rivals in this new esport landscape.
"It was amazing playing against many of my esports idols I looked up to when I was younger," he said. "The matches were incredibly fun to play in and a huge eye-opener in terms of how deep the game actually is on a competitive level. I learned a crazy amount while playing against both team Mirage and the Devs. I'm so excited to see how the game develops as teams form and work hard and train towards being the best. The future for the game, in my eyes, is so bright and refreshing. Riot has made something beautiful."
If the Cypher maestro keeps up his play as the game continues toward its official worldwide release this summer, he'll be an idol in his own right for the future generation of VALORANT players.