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The London Spitfire Win the First Overwatch League Finals

London could not be stopped, as the Spitfire stymied the Philadelphia Fusion to become the first Overwatch League World Champions.

Ozzie Mejia

July 28, 2018 2:47 PM

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The Overwatch League has concluded its first season in grand fashion, with the Finals having just wrapped up in front of a packed house at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. The first champions have been crowned and they're the young kids from the London Spitfire.

The deciding map came down to King's Row. This is where the Fusion appeared to wake up, with Isaac "Boombox" Charles putting Roadhog's hook to work. But London adjusted quickly, getting aggressive behind Seung-Tae "Bdosin" Choi's Zenyatta and Jun-Young "Profit" Park's Junkrat. Jun-Ho "Fury" Kim's D.Va was able to further clear out the Fusion players with a well-placed Self-Destruct. A second Self-Destruct didn't find the mark, though, as the Fusion rallied to take the third and final point.

When the Fusion came out hard on defense, London tried to adjust with a new team composition of Lucio, Moira, Zarya, Reinhardt, Brigitte, and D.Va. The Fusion had some unorthodox changes of their own, as Jae-Hyeok "Carpe" Lee came out with Doomfist and cleared out the payload with some on-target rocket punches. London regrouped and was able to dismantle the Philly defense with Profit's Brigitte and Gesture's Reinhardt, finishing with 1:10 to spare.

It was all cake from there, as Gesture took out main tank Su-Min "SADO" Kim and London was able to easily capture the final point to win the Overwatch League championship.

The first map for Match 2 on Saturday took both teams to Junkertown and London picked up right where they left off. Profit and Jae-Hui "Gesture" Hong, in particular, demoralized the Fusion early by teaming up for a devastating team kill. Watch Profit's Hanzo go to work:

London would push straight through the Fusion's defense, despite some incredible D.Va play from Gael "Poko" Gouzerch, and successfully capture the payload to go up 1-0.

The second map on Lijiang Tower went just as smoothly for London, as the Spitfire clamped down on the Fusion push. Despite Josue "Eqo" Corona's efforts to extend the Overtime session, London could not be stopped, as they went up 2-0.

Friday's opening match saw both teams ready to play and both coming out firing on Dorado. The Fusion outlasted the Spitfire defense to complete the payload escort on offense. But while the Spitfire looked to do the same, Philadelphia had one final hold in them and they made it count.

London would respond by taking the next two on Oasis and Eichenwalde. But Friday ended with one of the wildest plays of the whole season on Volskaya. Profit's Tracer went bananas on everyone and wiped out the entire Fusion team single-handedly, putting an exclamation point on the fourth map and clinching the Match 1 victory for London.

During the trophy ceremony, Profit was named Finals MVP for his incomparable play. For their victory, the London Spitfire walk away with $1 million, out of a $1.4 million prize pool.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?