With the first weekend of the Summer Showdown over, the Paris Eternal’s reverse sweep of the Los Angeles Gladiators on June 27 was the biggest news. After beating the Shock earlier in the weekend to solidify their spot amongst the top-tier teams in the West, Paris helped bring it down again. After starting the game off well, the Gladiators faced tough mid-game changes and crumbled against a rising Eternal team looking to make a mark. This is why this Paris Eternal win is Upcomer’s Overwatch League Match of the Week.
THE ETERNAL PULL OFF THE REVERSE SWEEP!
After being down 2-0, the @ParisEternal complete the comeback and defeat the @LAGladiators. #FiatLux | #OWL2021 pic.twitter.com/VUL8fkDvdW
— Overwatch League (@overwatchleague) June 27, 2021
What the Gladiators did right
When the Gladiators won the first two maps of the series, they had control of the game. On control, the team coordinated better than the Eternal, showing how they beat the Shock earlier in the week. The Eternal looked strong, but the plays around the tanks of the Gladiators were cleaner and led to many close fight wins. One thing that no one expected was Kevin “Kevster” Persson playing Genji on Eichenwalde’s defence. The dive composition that the Gladiators ran kept the Eternal from running their planned team-fights, and the comfort that the Gladiators showed on it was scary. Caster and analyst Josh “Sideshow” Wilkinson tweeted out as much around the same time.
Gladiators have easily been the best team we've seen so far in Summer Showdown. Extremely tough for Paris.
That doesn't mean too much yet though: we haven't seen Dallas, or Shanghai, and even Houston/Justice/Fusion/Atlanta could be top tier.
— Josh Wilkinson (@SideshowGaming) June 27, 2021
The precision led to a quick capture and effective push on Eichenwalde. Their second map win put them on the precipice of victory. It seemed that the Gladiators were simply on another level, with all players on the team outperforming players on the Eternal.
What the Eternal improved on
The Eternal came out of that second map and played Route 66, which led to the turnaround. They started on attack, pushing the cart a formidable distance, just before the map’s end. When the Gladiators pushed, it was clear that they wanted to stick to Kevster’s Genji. Due to the fact that Eternal didn’t have a Tracer on the field, they focused the supports with more ease. Along with overall better play across the board, the Eternal held on to take that map.
Then, on Temple of Anubis, the attack of the Gladiators was stifled on the second point and they started to crumble. Kim “birdring” Ji-hyeok was playing Sombra for most of the series. But, both on Route 66 and on Anubis, his weaknesses showed. In the final fight on their attack, he couldn’t build that fight-winning EMP fast enough. Paris had a clear win condition: to capture more than half of the second point. After a poor first-point defense, the casters themselves acknowledged the momentum shift of the game.
On Tracer, Stefan “Onigod” Fiskerstrand was harassing Kim “Shu” Jin-seo significantly more. After a close snowball push that got them a tick on second, they regrouped. Another Gladiators player was caught out and the Eternal capitalized to win and take it to a Map 5.
For real though that's a test of their mentality and they come up short.
Gladiators look good, but they're not quite there yet. There's time over the Summer Showdown to improve, but you can't have such peaks and troughs if you wanna get to Hawaii.
— Josh Wilkinson (@SideshowGaming) June 27, 2021
Then, to top it off, Map 5 was the team’s best map of the series. They started by aggressively playing Onigod on Symmetra. Along with Mei, the team locked the Gladiators down. Then, when they started the second part of Nepal under some trouble, they put Nikolai “Naga” Dereli on Pharah. As a projectile specialist, Naga’s Pharah — with the anti-dive Wrecking Ball composition — led them to take back control.
The Paris Eternal won the map and the series, making this Match of the Week an underdog reverse sweep.
