Overwatch Esports: Contenders Live Events & More

Overwatch Contenders Season 3 is slowly coming to a close in all regions, but the action is still heating up. With the announcement of the three live events spanning across the globe, and the recent South American Contenders semi-finals, there’s much to talk about amongst the Tier 2 scene of professional Overwatch.

Contenders Live Events

Blizzard Entertainment announced that there would be three live Contenders events happening this year, with the events being dubbed as ‘Showdowns’. Blizzard explained in a recent announcement that there would be two showdowns, a Pacific Showdown, and an Atlantic Showdown, with each division consisting of four regions each.

The Pacific division will consist of the following:

• The top team from Contenders Australia
• The top two teams from Contenders China
• The top two teams from Contenders Korea
• The top team from Contenders Pacific

The Atlantic division will consist of:

• The top two teams from Contenders Europe
• The top three teams from Contenders North America
• The top team from South America

The Pacific Showdown will take place from May 24th to May 26th this year in China, and the Atlantic Showdown will take place from May 31st to June 2nd in either Europe or the Americas. Once both showdowns have taken place, an event known as The Gauntlet. The teams competing in this event will be picked from the results of the two different showdowns, and it will take place from October 10th to October 13th.

The announcement of these live events has been positively received by the Overwatch community, as Blizzard recently cut down on the Contenders scene by removing LAN events this season from every region except the Korean and Australian regions, even if the Australian LAN events were only from the semi-finals onwards due to a sponsorship that Contenders Australia received.

Contenders South America Semi-Finals

Contenders South America is reaching its end, and the two matches that took place in the semi-finals were ones that fans had their eyes glued to from the moment they started.
The first matchup was between Isurus Gaming and Based Tryhards. Both teams had a pretty excellent run during the regular season, with Based Tryhards going 5-0 and not dropping a single match at all throughout the group stages, and Isurus Gaming going 4-1 and only losing 5 maps overall. However, after a fierce match, Based Tryhards emerged victorious, defeating Isurus Gaming 3-1, with Based Tryhards losing their very first map of the season. Both teams, however, performed brilliantly. Flex tank for Isurus Gaming, BEAST, successfully took out three members of Based Tryhards on Lijiang Tower as Zarya, securing a 2-0 map win for the team in the first round. On the other side, Based Tryhards flex tank, Honorato, executed a perfect wipe of half of Isurus Gaming whilst playing as D.va, forcing them off of the cart on Hollywood, enabling his teammates to push the cart over the finish line and avoiding going into overtime.

The second matchup pitted LFTOWL against UP Gaming, where the former team took an astounding 3-0 victory over the latter, boosting themselves up to the grand finals against Based Tryhards. Whilst LFTOWL managed to take the victory, both teams fought valiantly against each other, with UP Gaming main tank, Txozin, and DPS player, TH7, combining to eliminate the entirety of LFTOWL on Hanamura, with Txozin on Reinhardt and TH7 on Zarya. Whilst UP Gaming certainly put on a show, it was LFTOWL that took the win in the end, and it’s no surprise with bloodthirsty supports like flex support, ole, and main support, pizzalover, taking out four of the players of UP Gaming between them on Lijiang Tower.

Chengdu Hunters Pickup

One of the new teams introduced into the Overwatch League, the Chengdu Hunters, have picked up a new player hot off the press from Contenders China team, Team CC. Wei “jiqiren” Yansong has been picked up by the team representing Chengdu as one of their main tanks, the other being Ding “Ameng” Menghan. Known for his Reinhardt and Winston plays, jiqiren is surely to be an effective pickup for the new team.

Coming Up

Overwatch Contenders Season 3 is nearly over, but there are still a few matches to come!

Contenders Pacific

Thursday January 17th 6am EST – Contenders Pacific Semi-Finals Match 1 – Cyclone Coupling vs Nova Esports

Thursday January 17th 7:30am EST – Contenders Pacific Semi-Finals Match 2 – PHOENiX vs Hong Kong Attitude

Contenders Korea

Saturday January 19th 12am EST – Contenders Korea Grand Finals – Element Mystic vs RunAway

Contenders South America

Saturday January 19th 4pm EST – Contenders South America Grand Finals – Based Tryhards vs LFTOWL

Contenders Australia

Saturday January 19th 7pm EST – Contenders Australia Semi-Finals Match 1 – Sydney Drop Bears vs HEIST Gaming Club

Saturday January 19th 9pm EST – Contenders Australia Semi-Finals Match 2 – ORDER vs Athletico Esports

Saturday January 19th 11pm EST – Contenders Australia Grand Finals

These matches are guaranteed to be intense, and you will definitely not want to miss a moment of any of them!