Team Kaliber Defeats Rise Nation in CWL Pro League Stage 2 Playoffs
Team Kaliber pulled off a 3-1 grand finals victory Sunday against Rise Nation, establishing themselves as the best team in Stage Two of the CWL Pro League. This championship is the organization’s third in WWII, but their first in over six months.
Even though Team Kaliber narrowly lost the first grand finals series, they bounced back this weekend and took down one of the best squads in the world.
Rise Nation kicked off the grand finals with a strong victory on London Docks Hardpoint, but Team Kaliber struck back by taking Ardennes Forest Search and Destroy 6-2. This evened up the series and made things interesting.
Despite losing Ardennes Forest CTF 3-1 in their winners bracket finals match, Rise shut out Team Kaliber with a 4-0 win. However, they struggled in the subsequent Hardpoint. Pierce “Gunless” Hillman posted a game-high 43 kills, but it wasn’t enough and Rise fell on Ardennes Forest HP to allow a fifth game.
Then, Rise overcame Team Kaliber in an 11-round Valkyrie Search and Destroy game, forcing another best-of-five series.
Team Kaliber came out much stronger in the second series, winning the opening Hardpoint by a convincing 119-point total. But then, a pretty one-sided Valkyrie Search and Destroy by Rise brought the series back to an even score.
Team Kaliber then took the important third game on Ardennes Forest CTF and the fourth game on London Docks Hardpoint, despite losing twice to Rise on the map earlier in the day.
Congratulations to @TeamKaliber, your Stage 2 CHAMPIONS! GGs@KuavoKenny@f3rocitys@AccuracyLA@Enable#CWLPS4 pic.twitter.com/Ipci9jiwEn
— MLG (@MLG) July 29, 2018
The 250-190 victory gave Team Kaliber another event title this season, but it was Maurice “Fero” Henriquez’s first career title and also broke a dry spell for the organization’s newest player, Ian “Enable” Wyatt.
The former Halo star dominated Call of Duty with FaZe Clan over recent years, but he hadn’t won a major title since September 2015 when FaZe was crowned in the third season of the MLG Pro League in Advanced Warfare.
Team Kaliber’s Kenny “Kenny” Williams walked away with MVP honors for his performance on Sunday. Kenny played a major role in Team Kaliber’s victories at both CWL Dallas and CWL New Orleans at the start of the season, but this is the first time he’s been deemed MVP.
Now, Kenny and his teammate Lamar “Accuracy” Abedi are tied with the Rise Nation core trio as the most successful players of WWII, having collected three trophies across the season.
The Stage 2 victory also earns the players a collective $200,000 and some momentum less than three weeks away from the $1.5 million CWL Championship. With the win, Team Kaliber secured the top seed for the Call of Duty Championships, where they’re set to face off against Epsilon, Heretics, and Lightning Pandas in the group stage.