It was pretty hard to expect these teams to make it that far in the CS2 Major. Still, here they are: the underdogs, battling for one spot among the strongest Counter-Strike teams in the world.
Little did we know about the potential of Passion UA when the team appeared among the participants of BLAST Rivals 2025 in Hong Kong. Still, PUA defeated The MongolZ back then and unrolled an extremely close battle against Team Falcons.
That’s the only big tournament presence of CS2 Passion UA after their creation in 2023. No one would put such a team as the favorite at a Major. But the roster is generally has a good experience, as the core is formed by former Complexity players
M80 represent North America in Budapest. The 3:0 run in Stage 1 was already a surprise, as their previous results weren’t too promising. Ahead of this Major, M80 played only in one tier 1 event of the season: they qualified for BLAST Open Fall 2025 but finished last. M80 still defeated NAVI in the qualifier.
With that being said, Passion UA is rather a dark horse, while M80 can be considered the favorites in this advancement match at the Budapest Major 2025. For both, making it to Stage 3 is a great breakthrough.
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Passion UA vs M80 at the CS2 Budapest Major 2025: Match details and results
Banned maps | Map 1 | Map 2 | Map 3 | Match score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nuke, M80 Ancient, PUA Dust, PUA Overpass, M80 | Mirage, M80 pick | Inferno, M80 pick | Train, decider | PUA 2:1 M80 |
| PUA 11:13 M80 | PUA 13:5 M80 | PUA 0:0 M80 |
It was a really impactful match for both teams. Winning this best-of-three battle would open amazing opportunities for further growth.
Passion UA took this chance. They demonstrated their ability not to crumble under the Major's pressure and recover brilliantly. PUA lost an extremely close Map 1, and then they dominated the rest two, despite a great periods from M80.
Passion UA advanced to Stage 3 of the CS2 Budapest Major 2025. M80 are out.
"We played really well. Even on Mirage, we played well, and we kept going after losing Mirage. We had a good mental, we kept playing good, kept doing good macros and speaking with each other. I feel happy."
Mirage
The conversation around Mirage in this match was whirling around the struggles of Passion UA on the T side. They needed to earn a nice advantage as CTs, but despite having some pretty good rounds, PUA couldn’t make it more than 6:6 in the first half.
When it came to switching sides, we could see that the threat of playing as Ts is not that awful for Passion. Still, it isn’t though yet. M80 had a good start as CTs, but then they got smashed by the awakened power of PUA. Specifically, Vladyslav “Kvem” Korol woke up to the play: he had trouble adapting to the Major’s pressure.
M80 survived a streak by their opponents and responded nicely: equalized the score, reached the match point, and won Mirage.
Inferno
This map showed the strength of Passion UA. They had a great start and an absolutely dominant finish. Inferno looked very one-sided.
M80 still had a chance to recover and bring at least the first half to a closer score. They lost an anti-eco round because of a tricky offense of Michael “Grim” Wince in CT Apartments.
On the CT side, Passion UA won the pistols and then just sealed the deal — to bring the match versus M80 for the Major life to the decisive map.
Train
With a rather short gap in the middle, Passion UA dominated this map, too. They had a wonderful start on the CT side and then brought the aggressive rotations and quick kills to a theoretically disadvantageous T play on Train.
M80 had a chance to be out of the abyss in the first half. They won a great eco round and made the score close. They totally fell apart in the second half.
Making this far: M80 and Passion UA at the StarLadder Major 2025 in Budapest
Passion UA joined the Major as one of the Stage 2 teams. Their run started with facing the top CS2 competitors: PUA lost to FaZe Clan, but they made some of the matches really stressful for those top dogs.
In the next Bo1, PUA defeated MIBR. The team had two matches of the Bo3 format: one loss to 3DMAX and a win over Fnatic.
M80 started the tournament with Stage 1, and they had a perfect 3:0 run in that phase of the Major. The wins were over B8, PARAVISION, and NRG. The first two teams are already in Stage 3.In the current stage, M80 enjoyed wins over Astralis and Fnatic. Still, they lost to Aurora and TYLOO.
The winners must be ready for much stronger opponents in Stage 3. The very first round on this stage throws them into matchups against higher-seeded teams. These Swiss System battles happen from Dec. 4 to Dec. 7.
