Gaimin Gladiators continue their quest to defend the Esports World Cup title, reach playoffs stage in Riyadh

Gaimin Gladiators survived the elimination in the Gauntlet bracket stage at Esports World Cup 2025 with a quick 2-0 over Team Yandex.

Esports World Cup (EWC) defending champions, Gaimin Gladiators, started the tournament in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, seeded in arguably one of the toughest groups. They had the recent PGL Wallachia Season 5 Champions in Group B, along with Team Falcons and managed to finish in second place. That sent them in the second round of the Gauntlet bracket and needed just one series victory to advance to the playoffs.

Their adversaries for the Gauntlet stage were Team Yandex, who delivered on Saturday the longest game of the EWC so far to make it past the first round of eliminations. However, when pitted against Gaimin, they found themselves completely overwhelmed.

Gaimin return to aura-man strategy

The first game of the series closed in just 25 minutes, as Gaimin went back to a strategy that they mastered back in the 2023/24 seasons. They put Marcus "Ace" Christensen back on the Underlord and let him build all the big aura items and forced Yandex to play on their terms in every engagement. The story repeated in game two, where Underlord was also a strong counter to Yandex’s carry Nature’s Prophet and mid lane Storm Spirit. The auras and the AOE lockdown provided by Ace proved all too much for Yandex, who had to bow out of the competition in the 9th/12th place and with $75,000 in their pockets.

Gaimin Gladiators will return to the stage on Wednesday, July 16, when they will kick off the playoffs single elimination bracket with a best-of-three series against Team Spirit at 11:00 CET.