NAVI oppose Vitality at BLAST Austin Major but can’t stop their phenomenal win streak

There were two main favorites at the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 event. Team Spirit won the previous Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) Major, and fans expected a great performance from them again. However, MOUZ destroyed this hope and eliminated Spirit from the tournament.

The second favorite is Team Vitality — thanks to their amazing results this year. Not so many esports organizations have five-trophy streaks at top-level tournaments. At the moment, Vitality is generally considered the best CS2 roster.

To fulfill their ambitions to win as many events as possible, Team Vitality had to defeat NAVI in the Major’s quarterfinal. Natus Vincere has had ups and downs throughout their recent matches, and facing Vitality sure is tough. NAVI is a wonderful team, but the miracle did not happen.

It’s the first match of the tournament day: NAVI and Vitality decide who advances to the semifinal to face MOUZ.

Right after this CS2 esports match, you can enjoy the battle between FaZe and MongolZ. S1mple and his current crew are eager to prove they are over with unstable rounds. MongolZ would love to continue their series of great tournament placements.

The format of CS2 BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 leaves little space for missteps, especially in the playoffs. There are no lower brackets here, and one loss means elimination. NAVI and Team Vitality have a best-of-three (Bo3) match to adapt and recover — then, the losers are out.

The game was pretty even in the first half. NAVI and Vitality exchanged rounds and reached the side swap with 6:6.

On the CT side, NAVI’s defense fell apart pretty quickly. They lost a few crucial rounds and found themselves with a broken economy in the final part.

Vitality just delivered the final blows with excellent offense.

The record was not in favor of NAVI on Nuke. They have been performing so badly on this CS2 map that the stream analysts were pretty sure there were no chances for Natus Vincere in this match.

NAVI won the Pistols as CTs, but Vitality planted the bomb and eliminated all the opponents in Round 3 on their first full buy. Then, we saw five won rounds from Vitality.

NAVI was able to break that in Round 8, even if they got a knife kill from ZywOo. After that, they won a few rounds on force buy and reached the side swap with 5:7 in favor of Vitality.

In the second half, both teams made some awful mistakes, like a lost round for NAVI when the opponents were on a force buy and a lost round for Vitality when apEX seemingly forgot to reload.

NAVI needed one round to trigger overtime, but a brilliant play by mezii did not let that happen.

Team Vitality started the Austin Major with an unfortunate loss. Legacy defeated them with a 13:3 on Inferno. That did not affect the final outcome of Stage 3 as Vitality advanced to the playoffs and Legacy got eliminated. Still, it was the end of the 30-match streak for Vitality.

In addition to this record, the team is building their tournament streak. They come to this BLAST Major event with five trophies in a row. Victory at IEM Dallas 2025 is the most recent one for Vitality, and it’s a phenomenal achievement!

For NAVI, who won PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, reaching the top 8 only is not a good result, but it reflects their placement at a few recent CS2 esports events. Even at PGL Astana 2025, with only a few top teams present, Natus Vincere were 5th–8th. They got eliminated by Astralis.

At the Austin Major itself, NAVI lost to Team Spirit in Stage 3. Also, they had extremely tough matches aginst 3DMAX and G2 — with overtime games being too close for comfort.

In the parallel brackets, paiN Gaming defeated FURIA, and this Brazilian team plays against MongolZ, who won the semifinal. The grand final of BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 happens on June 22.

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