Image credit: Toronto Ultra Twitter
Majority-UK Call of Duty League (CDL) team Toronto Ultra last night eliminated fan-favourite squad OpTic Chicago, guaranteeing them at least a top-four finish at Champs. Toronto won 3-1, closing out the tie on Raid Control.
Going into this weekend, Toronto Ultra — comprising three top UK players in Benjamin Bance, Jamie ‘Insight’ Craven and Cameron ‘Cammy’ McKilligan — was second favourite on Sky Bet to become world champion behind only Atlanta FaZe.
Esports News UK interviewed Toronto star Cammy ahead of Champs earlier this week. Speaking on Toronto’s ambitions at champs, Cammy told Esports News UK: “I think we’ve had a pretty good season. It’d be disappointing if we didn’t win for sure, but I’m proud of how we’ve played throughout the season.” The Scottish player has been one of the CDL’s best all year.
Fans in the arena, particularly OpTic fans, were in good spirits as usual. The Greenwall was out in full force but the team disappointed again, despite legendary CoD player and personality Seth ‘Scump’ Abner having an excellent tournament.
And this was by no means the first time Toronto has bested OpTic. During this Black Ops Cold War season, Toronto Ultra has won six out of seven matches against H3CZ’s team.
Concurrent viewership was hovering around 100,000 on YouTube throughout the match. This number dropped to around 55,000 during the next match between Minnesota ROKKR and New York Subliners, highlighting the importance of the OpTic brand and the brand of its individual players for the CDL. Still, despite the wishes of the majority of fans, Toronto, who was favourite heading in, won the day in what was in the end a comfortable 3-1 win.
Next for Toronto Ultra is Minnesota ROKKR in the lower-bracket final, which starts today at roughly 9:30pm BST.
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