Vitality beaten by Falcons in kyxsan's redemption - IEM Rio Day Three

The best team of all time has been felled - but remain in contention - by Team Falcons.

kyxsan has been reported to be on his way out, and there seems to be little contention on the rumours from Falcons' sources, but he's leading this team superbly and a win over Team Vitality only reinforces the point.

He's been helped by m0NESY being on an absolute heater, and he was once again the best player in the server, ran close only by ropz, but not that close. The AWPer was dominant on all three maps, even looking fantastic in the one-sided Dust 2 loss, while ZywOo was unusually quiet.

The deciding map, Nuke, was m0NESY's all over, appearing in the right place at the right time more than seems humanly possible, and turning close rounds into wins. Given it was won in overtime, those rounds were extremely important, and quite honestly, if they'd had anyone else AWPing today, they would not have won.

Falcons continue to be the only team who can beat Vitality, weirdly.

Team Spirit stumbled past RED Canids in wholly unconvincing fashion, before recovering their composure to knock out G2 (who smacked 3DMAX around) in two and book a playoffs spot.

kauez put in an extraordinary amount of work to beat Spirit on Mirage, which is becoming a bit of a problem map for Spirit, but that seemed to irritate donk and tN1R (who has been much improved this event, at least to our eye) who decided to rip RED Canids apart on the next two maps.

tN1R was the tip of the spear that pierced G2's heart too, following donk in and cleaning up time after time. donk was kept quieter, but tN1R finally hit the level we were hoping for, and Spirit looked all the scarier for it. If this team is a triple threat, instead of a double, then we are interested again.

G2 had a solid event here even without huNter-, and while tAk had some promising moments, it's clear to see he's not quite there yet.

NAVI breezed past HOTU and hit Aurora with a brutal T side on Dust 2 to book their spot in the quarter-finals. iM is back in Paris Major form, it seems, and he's been cooking. makazze remains one of the best players in the world, quietly, too.

Aurora looked like they could have been a top four team not long ago, but the big boys have come back into form a little bit in Rio, and they're back to their rightful place. At least they beat B8.

FURIA moved straight into the semis as they beat MOUZ in two maps with molodoy hitting his best form again. With the way m0NESY is playing, tN1R is hitting form, molodoy is back and Vitality are slipping... maybe, just maybe we can see something special.