The Call of Duty League will not have a repeat champion in 2021. The Toronto Ultra went the distance today to take down the Dallas Empire in the losers bracket final.
In one of the most entertaining series of the entire season, Toronto clutched up at every moment in the series’ fifth game on Express Search and Destroy to close out the series. The Empire got the bomb down on the B site four times throughout the map, but each time, the Ultra were there for the retake. Toronto, who have been widely regarded as the second-best team in the league behind the Atlanta FaZe, made an impressive losers bracket run all the way to the grand finals.
The series’ fourth map, Raid Hardpoint, produced one of the greatest endings to an individual map in competitive CoD history. Late in the game, Toronto held a 216-151 lead and sat just 34 points away from the 250 needed to win. Dallas began bringing the score closer by breaking the Ultra’s setups. The map’s final hardpoint, Ring (P1), is where all hell broke loose.
With the score tied 244-244, bodies were flying around the map. Players from both teams were throwing themselves at the hill, trading kills back and forth until there were only Empire players on the point, giving Dallas the win by the thinnest of margins.
For some teams, this may have been a death sentence. But for Toronto, they’ve been through worse collapses—and Cammy knew they needed to reset for the series’ fifth and final map.
“We just had to calm ourselves down,” the star AR player said to Jess Brohard in the post-game interview. “We just had to take some deep breaths, relax. We knew we were the better SnD team, so we took our time and then last map, we looked really good.”
Toronto’s focus now turns to the grand finals and their opponent, FaZe. Atlanta have had their number this season, holding a 6-1 match record over the Ultra. Toronto’s one win, though, came at the Stage Two Major when the Ultra knocked off FaZe in the grand finals to claim the championship. The two teams have not played each other since the Stage Four Major in June, where FaZe won 3-1.
“They’ve beat us quite a few times this year, we’ve had one on them,” Cammy said of FaZe. “We just gotta play our game. We obviously match them really well in SnD so I’d say it’s honestly just about taking respawns off them.”
The grand finals of CoD Champs 2021 will take place tomorrow at 2pm CT with Atlanta and Toronto playing in a best-of-nine to determine the season’s champion.
Published: Aug 21, 2021 08:04 pm