CDL 2021: Toronto Ultra Major Champions; OpTic Embarrassed Once Again
Last week, when we discussed the potential outcomes for the Call of Duty League Stage II Major, we predicted some huge underdog victories. And, thankfully, that’s exactly what we received, with Toronto Ultra pulling an unimaginable victory over Atlanta FaZe to be crowned the $200,000 victors of the Major Tournament.
It was a maneuver that almost nobody saw coming, with Toronto Ultra competing from the first stage of the Winners Bracket, playing a total of five matches to pick up the victory – more than any other team in the Major Tournament. It was a Call of Duty League Road to Victory that will be remembered for years to come.
Firstly, Ultra devastated OpTic Chicago with a huge 3 – 1 victory, before falling with the same scoreline to a dominant Atlanta FaZe side. However, the all-EU side wasn’t done at that stage, and it went on to beat the LA Thieves 3 – 0, Minnesota Rokkr 3 – 1, Dallas Empire 3 – 1, and then wiped FaZe off the board with a huge 5 – 3 Bo7 win.
To give credit where credit is due, the Ultra team put on an incredible show, with every competitor in the squad pulling their weight in equal amounts. There were special commendations handed out to the likes of CleanX, pulling out a massive seven-streak on a round of Control, and Insight, who dominated FaZe at their game – Search and Destroy.
Bance revealed that he’d been legitimately considering retirement in recent weeks, following a lackluster start to the Call of Duty League 2021 season. He posted a screenshot on Twitter of a conversation wherein he’d said, “I’m crap, I might as well retire tbh.” However, in a post following that up, Bance declared:
sent this to my fiancée being deadly serious after startign satge 2 0-2 and receiving over 500 tweets to bench myself. What a turn around and I cannot thank my team enough! It may not seem like much but this win means a lot to me.
In other news, OpTic Chicago was embarrassed once again by an underwhelming performance, particularly in a match against Minnesota Rokkr. It was the defining moment of the tournament when, in a round-eleven, map-five Search and Destroy showdown, Rokkr’s Accuracy single-handedly removed OpTic Chicago from the running.
It was a devastating moment for the OpTic players, who have been sharing their load of bad luck in recent weeks. Following this event, the Minnesota Rokkr social media team was accused of posting ‘in bad taste’ and playing off of OpTic’s heartbreak for impressions on Twitter.
Scump personally called out Rokkr regarding this upset:
This is some of the most disrespectful shit I seen. We are literally heartbroken and you use it for impressions? Post the clutch, post your celebration, but kicking us like this? Your team was literally banking on us to get first seed last week. So unbelievably classless.
— OpTic Scump (@scump) April 11, 2021
Ultimately, this Major Tournament was a Call of Duty League spectacle to be remembered, and we go into Stage III with a refreshed board and a new fervour for competition. It’s Atlanta FaZe that still sits in the top spot, closely followed by Dallas Empire, and OpTic Chicago has now moved into the third-place position.
At the other end of the table sits the Royal Ravens, Surge, and Paris Legion – all of whom will need a remarkable Stage to gain any traction in the competition.
Let’s see what happens.
