M80 top Dreamhack Knockout Atlanta following dominant showing over BIG
M80 have topped DreamHack Knockout Atlanta, delivering a knockout blow to BIG in the grand finals to secure a spot in ESL Pro League Season 23. The team's road to the qualifying saw M80 secure wins over SportsBetExpert, Radford University, Marsborne, and BIG.
The first of ESL's BYOC qualifiers for Pro League featured a somewhat disappointing turnout of 14 teams, with the low attendance also certainly influenced by the $995 tickets and the expenses imposed by the event requiring teams to "Bring Your Own Computer". Despite that, a number of NA teams made the trek out to Atlanta alongside BIG and Imperial.
BIG's own road to the finals saw the team avoid any serious challenges for much the event as they cruised through GasLighting Guru's, Ghost, and FlyQuest RED. They finally ran into some opposition against Imperial as it required three maps for BIG to take the win over the Brazilian squad.
The grand finals saw BIG concede their map pick, Dust2, after failing to close out six match points a row in regulations before losing in overtime 13-16.
As for Mirage, M80, were utterly dominant as they began the map with a 10-2 T-side before closing out the map and the series with a 13-5 win. In the series, Lake went on a tear with a 1.57 rating while Adam "WolfY" Andersson had the best performance over the event with a 1.35 rating over five maps.
M80BIG| M80 |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 3.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Mason 'Lake' Sanderson |
47 - 32 | +15 | 97.8 | 76.6% | 1.57 |
 Elias 's1n' Stein |
32 - 24 | +8 | 72.0 | 74.5% | 1.26 |
| Fritz 'slaxz-' Dietrich |
40 - 32 | +8 | 80.5 | 87.2% | 1.22 |
 Jadan 'HexT' Postma |
33 - 30 | +3 | 75.2 | 70.2% | 1.11 |
| Michael 'Swisher' Schmid |
27 - 30 | -3 | 73.1 | 78.7% | 1.10 |
| BIG |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 3.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| David 'prosus' Hesse |
37 - 31 | +6 | 81.5 | 70.2% | 1.17 |
| Johannes 'tabseN' Wodarz |
33 - 40 | -7 | 78.4 | 61.7% | 0.97 |
| Jon 'JDC' de Castro |
27 - 37 | -10 | 67.4 | 61.7% | 0.84 |
| Lukas 'FreeZe' Hegmann |
24 - 40 | -16 | 70.2 | 63.8% | 0.72 |
 Jason 'JBOEN' Boe Nielsen |
26 - 32 | -6 | 48.4 | 57.4% | 0.72 |
M80 will now await the start of ESL Pro League Season 23 on February 27th, 2026.
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