Natus Vincere are your PUBG Global Championship 2022 champions and what a year it has been for them! 

As we mentioned prior to PGC in our Preview Blog, NAVI’s strength lies in the fact that they don’t just have one or two star players - each of the team’s players are equally capable of outputting huge damage numbers consistently. It’s this very consistency that arguably propelled the team to their epic PGC win in Dubai last Sunday. To truly understand NAVI’s journey to become PGC champions, we have to turn the clock back to the beginning of 2022.

Even though the squad had some mixed results in PCS6 and PCS7 (with eighth and fifteenth place results respectively), we got a taste of their prowess and consistency during G-Loot S5 and S6, where they managed very strong second place finishes in both.
 

At PGC 2022, Natus Vincere’s tournament run got off to a roaring start with a first place finish in their group stage. That first place finish, however, was hard fought; the team finished just three points above YAHO, who came in second. Natus Vincere’s success in the group stage was particularly facilitated by xmpl, who had a ferocious performance and ultimately ended the stage with the second highest number of kills on the server.

Natus Vincere extended their dominant performance with a first place finish in the Winner’s Bracket. The team took home three Chicken Dinners over the course of ten games - the most of any team in the Winner’s Bracket - and became the first team to have ever won both the Group Stage and the Winner’s Bracket. 

Throughout the course of the Grand Finals, Natus Vincere were consistently towards the top of the leaderboard. However, it didn’t look like they were in the running to win outright; after the penultimate day of the Grand Finals, they ended up in fifth place, trailing the leaders - Twisted Minds - by over 40 points. In spite of this, the team subsequently had a dramatic comeback on the last day of the Grand Finals.

After winning the first and third game of the day with some outstanding plays, NAVI went into the last match of the Grand Finals contending for the top spot with Twisted Minds and 17GAMING. All three teams were just a handful of points away from each other, so the championship title within reach for all of them. However, before the close of Phase Four, Twisted Minds fell to a rival Europe team - Question Mark. When 17GAMING’s last player was wiped out by CERBERUS Esports in Phase Six, it became clear that the PGC 2022 Champions had been decided. Natus Vincere carried on to win the final match and the tournament title. The champions will be taking home just over $1,000,000 in prize money!
 

While PGC marks the end of this year’s PUBG Esports competitions, a whole new competition structure awaits us in Early 2023! To find out more about our roadmap for next year, check out our full article here. 
 

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See you on the Battlegrounds!
- The PUBG Esports Team