London Spitfire steamroll Philadelphia Fusion to win Overwatch League Grand Finals

It’s all over for the first season of Overwatch League as the Spitfire thoroughly trounced the Fusion on the second day of the Grand Finals. It was a short day, too: Philadelphia didn’t stand a chance as London locked them out of a single map win. While a third game was on the schedule, Philadelphia never got there.

That was something of a letdown, as I think most of us were ready for a dramatic day of Overwatch. (I know I was.) Instead, we got a clean sweep. Philly put up a good fight and had some serious clutch plays, with both EQO and Poko throwing London back to the respawn point with well-timed hits.

…. and the killfeed goes WHITE. @eqo @poko #OWL2018 #TheFirstFinals

LIVE: https://t.co/U6dIioZfOU pic.twitter.com/egUDHay0rr

— Overwatch League (@overwatchleague) July 28, 2018

And there were a few brawls where things were nail-bitingly close. Despite their loss, we saw some tremendous play from Philadelphia.

INCREDIBLE back and forth between the @Fusion & @Spitfire!

😯😯😯 #OWL2018 #TheFirstFinalshttps://t.co/U6dIioZfOU pic.twitter.com/KRrXtwbxII

— Overwatch League (@overwatchleague) July 28, 2018

But the team just couldn’t keep the momentum going long enough to win an entire map today. A few strong moments just wasn’t enough to earn Philly the championships.

That was an unfortunate theme for London vs. Philadelphia this weekend: though the Fusion got off to a strong start yesterday by winning the first map of game 1, they followed up with a six-map losing streak. Ouch. After beating top team NYXL last week, this was a pretty crushing loss. 

But the Fusion had some stiff competition, as the London Spitfire were playing at the top of their game. The team managed to keep key Fusion player Carpe locked down, which kept Philly from getting the advantage of his strong sniper play. And while Carpe spent a lot of time running back from respawn, the Spitfire’s Profit scored some devastating Dragonstrikes. One particularly clutch combo had Gesture grabbing four Philly players with Halt! followed up by a Dragonstrike from Profit.

NOT so fast… @GestureOW @PROFIT_OWL #OWL2018 #TheFirstFinals

LIVE: https://t.co/U6dIipgQGs pic.twitter.com/0nM37poeGp

— Overwatch League (@overwatchleague) July 28, 2018

Wow. Just wow. London spent the entire series playing on that level, and Philly just couldn’t keep up.

If you missed watching the matches yourself, you can catch the video on demand on Twitch. Day one was more competitive, while day two saw particularly good play from London as they steamrolled their way to victory. For fans, it’s worth watching the whole (short) series.

While that’s the end of the Overwatch League standard season, All-Star Weekend is August 25-26, and I’m definitely looking forward to that. It features two 18-player teams of the best in the League (including my favorite, Geguri) facing off against one another. But despite the talent of the individual players, I wonder how these matches will go. These teams haven’t had much time to work together, and we’ve seen how important team cohesion is for OWL success. Still, they’re certain to be some interesting matches.