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In this special series of in-depth articles, Esports News UK, in collaboration with the betting partner GGBET UK, delves into the stories, moments, and personalities that have left a lasting impression on the past, present, and future of the UK esports scene.
The UK’s long history in esports means that stories of success are not hard to find. From miracle maps to roster changes that just seemed to click, here are Reece Barrett’s top five UK esports underdogs who shocked the world and brought the elite to the sword.
Into the Breach defy the odds by qualifying for Blast Paris Major AND reaching playoffs
February-May 2023
This is perhaps the UK’s most famous underdog story in recent memory, having taken place in 2023.
UK esports organisation Into The Breach – ranked 42nd in the world at the time – smashed their way through the first EU open qualifier, and tousled in the closed qualifier to secure a spot in the European RMRs ahead of the Blast Paris Major 2023.
Getting to the RMRs is no small feat for a UK org, and it is also by no means a ticket to the major.
Only eight of the 16 teams involved get to go through, but the top four used to gain “legend status,” which advanced the team to the second round of the major itself by default.
Nobody was expecting Into The Breach to even finish in the top 10, but then they suddenly took Natus Vincere to overtime in their first RMR match.
They lost, but only by three rounds, after pushing Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyljev’s side to their absolute limit.
Then something special happened.
ITB beat Viperio, then Fnatic, then Faze 2-0 in a best of three…
Before they, or the wider UK community knew it, Into The Breach had qualified for the Blast Paris Major – becoming the first (and last) UK team to ever do so in CSGO.
They had not just made it to the major, which was an achievement in itself, but they had done so as “legends,” meaning they bypassed the first swiss stage and were just three wins away from the playoffs.
Brit Thomas ‘Thomas’ Utting’s ITB waited for the world’s best in The Legends Stage, and suddenly wins over Faze and Ence saw them eyeing up a spot in the playoffs of a tournament that nobody expected them to even qualify for.
A 2-1 dagger win over William ‘mezii’ Merriman’s Fnatic sent them through and Into The Breach were suddenly a major play-off side.
It was not meant to be in the quarter-finals, as eventual winners Vitality knocked them out 2-0 in France, across two extremely competitive maps, and while the fairytale run ended there, it created memories that no UK Counter-Strike fan will ever forget.
Thomas, CYPHER, rallen, volt and CRUC1AL, coach Juve, and everyone at ITB, we salute you.
Read a full analysis of ITB’s run at the Paris Major 2023 here, and you can learn more about Into The Breach’s run in our history of UK Counter-Strike breakdown.
MNM Gaming reach the Rainbow Six Siege Pro League
May 2019
Now-closed UK esports organisation MNM Gaming first entered Siege back in 2018 in the UK & Ireland ESL Premiership.
At first it just didn’t click for them. They lost key members of their team at short notice, until six months of pain suddenly turned into four months of bliss.
Brits Ben ‘CTZN’ McMillan, Jack ‘Doki’ Robertson, Luke ‘Kendrew’ Kendrew, plus Polish player Szymon ‘Saves’ Kamieniak, Croatian Leon ‘neLo’ Pesić and British coach Ellis ‘GiG’ Hindle all united to form an updated MNM lineup, and their impact was almost immediate.
MNM first reached the EU Challenger League in February 2019 and then won a trophy on home soil by winning the Siege ESL Premiership in Manchester.
MNM’s stock was very suddenly high, and they took the momentum forward into the Challenger League, finishing second in the league table ahead of the play-offs portion of the season.
Only four teams made it through to the knockout bracket, so it meant that MNM were only two best of three wins away from the Pro League.
They first scraped through against Team GoSkilla, who held them to all three maps but collapsed in the last to give MNM the 2-1 win.
“It’s actually crazy how much we have done in the four months of properly being together. Just goes to show if you work hard enough you’ll get it.”
Ben ‘CTZN’ McMillan on MNM Gaming qualifying for the Rainbow Six Pro League
Team Vitality were the last team for MNM to beat, but the French had a psychological advantage having beaten the English 7-5 in a best of one during the regular season.
But that did not matter to MNM on the day, who bounced back from an early 7-3 thrashing in the first map to pick up the second and third in the series.
It put them straight through to Season 10 of the Pro League, and despite the roster leaving to join Natus Vincere before the campaign got underway, MNM had a feel-good underdog story for a home organisation housing their home players.
MNM went on to have a storied history in Siege. Unfortunately, earlier this year, MNM Gaming entered administration following complaints that their most recent players had not been paid.
Brit team leader Ataraxia almost secures Smite World Championship with Titan
January 2015
Brit Nate ‘Ataraxia’ Mark’s Titan roster were the opposite of big stars in the infancy of Smite, and their path to underdog glory began in their journey towards the Smite World Championship.
Known as Agilitas to begin with, the Brit’s team narrowly missed out on a spot in the first season of the European Smite Pro League.
That six-team tournament was a surefire rocket towards the Smite World Championship (SWC) at the time as the top four from the league went on to the Regional Championships (RCs) – the final hurdle before qualifying for the SWC.
Agilitas barely missed out, but missed out they did, so their path towards the first SWC began in the open Challenger Cups, which gave amateur sides a chance to make it to the regionals.
The opposition were no match for Ataraxia’s side.
They won every single Challenger Cup in the run-up to the Regional Championships ahead of the 2015 SWC, where they were signed by Cognitive Gaming’s Aquila brand.
“The biggest challenge is the drive. To stay at the top of the game you need to be very committed, you need to have a strong work ethic and drive to continue to improve – never get complacent.”
Ataraxia speaking to British Esports back in 2018
Only the top two from the Regional Championships made it to the SWC, and of course Aquila powered through against the odds to bring the Pro League titans to their knees – they ended up winning the entire RCs.
An iconic win over Cloud9 when Aquila’s Titan only had 1% of its health remaining branded Ataraxia’s team as one who were never down and out.
That’s when Titan came knocking – signing the underdogs 28 days before the SWC started – and an early win and loss in the group stage saw them shuffle through to the quarter finals.
Titan’s resolve reigned supreme, because as the underdogs navigated the playoffs, they managed to learn from former mistakes and push through.
First, the Brazilians ‘We Love Bacon’ fell to Titan in the knockout stage.
Then the semi-finals promised a classic versus SK Gaming, whom Titan had beaten in the RCs two months prior.
Two games later and Titan had sealed their spot in the final with a 2-0 win.
The underdogs, still battling against the odds despite their big-org backing, went into the championship point match versus Cognitive Prime, with the support of the entire game behind them – a team led by a Brit with minimal LAN experience were one win away from victory.
They had the chance to beat the Cognitive organisation that once housed them, in a best of five match against a North American team considered the favourites.
Titan lost the first two maps in almost trademark fashion.
The kings of the comeback had it all to do, and they didn’t mind those odds, so they switched up the veto and took advantage of a complacent Cog Prime who let Ao Kuang and Sylvanus slip through the veto.
Titan’s Andreas ‘KanyeLife’ Christmansson also loved to dominate with Ares, who he also managed to get through the pick/ban sequence, and suddenly Titan were back playing with their favourite Gods.
The third map went Titan’s way, then they picked up the fourth map, and now we were all tied up in this best of five final.
Cog Prime would steal the victory in the final match as Titan lost their composure and gave away too many easy engagements, and the North Americans walked away with the massive $1.3m first place prize.
It wasn’t to be for Ataraxia, but the Brit went from wanting to take a break after missing out on a Pro League spot to almost leading his European roster to a world championship – becoming Smite’s first true underdog.
You can watch the Smite World Championships 2015 final back here.
Wolfiez stuns Fortnite Duo World Cup after taking eight attempts to qualify
One of the qualities of esports competition is that almost anyone can have the chance to qualify for the biggest events.
While games like Counter-Strike move away from open qualifiers for their world championships, a plethora of stories remind us what can happen when any amateur has the chance to disrupt the world’s elite via opens.
Enter British teen Jaden ‘Wolfiez’ Ashman, born in 2003, and operating at the top of his game in 2019.
The way that the first Fortnite World Cup worked was that qualifiers were held each week, and the top four duos in each qualifier would advance to the FWC Finals.
Wolfiez, playing with Dutchman Dave ‘Rojo’ Jong, tried his hand in the open qualification circuit, but was unsuccessful in his first attempt.
And his second attempt. And his third attempt.
Finally, on his eighth time of asking, Wolfiez managed to qualify for the finals by topping Week 10’s festivities – with the duo also securing themselves a tidy $20,000 alongside their spot in the FWC.
It might have taken several tries for them to book their tickets to the event, but Wolfiez and Rojo didn’t just make up the numbers. They smashed through the competition at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York City to finish second in the tournament.
They had come from eight tries of qualifying to overnight millionaires, finishing second to win a shared $2,250,000 paycheque that got the national media back in the UK scrambling to cover the story.
Wolfiez never really replicated the success that he experienced at the first and only Fortnite World Cup, and he isn’t actively competing now, but the story acts as another ode to the idea that anyone can download a game and compete in esports – another case study that argues that open qualification should never be snatched away.
See an in-depth interview as Wolfiez opens up on fitness and health with Esports News UK here.
Team UK destroy tournament favourites USA at Overwatch World Cup with many players not in the OWL
Sometimes the very nature of underdogs means that they only pop up with greatness on occasion, but when they do, the scene is forced to take notice.
That’s exactly what happened with Team UK at the 2018 Overwatch World Cup.
Team USA were touted favourably before the tournament, as experts felt as though their star-spangled line-up was the only team strong enough to challenge South Korea’s hold on the trophy.
Their first round game against Team UK looked to be a whitewash of the Union Jack.
Our British boys had some standout players – Isaac ‘Boombox’ Charles from Philadelphia Fusion in the Overwatch League was one of them. But three of the players were playing for the British Hurricane academy side.
Team USA, on the other hand, had a team full of seasoned OWLers who were coming into the event fresh off a week-long bootcamp.
It seemed that the game would only go one way, and the opening to the match threatened that, as USA dominated the Control map to take a 1-0 lead in the series.
A move to King’s Row – the UK-based map – saw the king’s men take control of the game, preventing the professionals from even capturing the point on the hybrid map.
The best of five continued with Volskaya Industries, which the UK held their nerve on, as a seriously competitive match finished 4-3 to the Brits.
Team UK had taken a two map lead, but considering how close Volskaya was, USA were certainly not out of the series just yet.
It would take serious resolve for the UK to close out the best of five, but that is exactly what they did on Route 66, narrowly winning the escort map to send home a USA team that was expected to go for the championship.
The fallout was bedlam, as a big esports upset had been completed, and Team USA had been dumped out by their transatlantic adversaries.
The UK were knocked out in the semi-finals against eventual winners South Korea, who did not lose a single map in the entire event, but regardless of the next match, and considering that Overwatch’s future went in a different direction in the years to follow, this will go down as the game’s biggest ever upset.
The UK esports scene has been blessed to have too many underdog stories to tell, and you can read more stories elsewhere on our site, such as Splyce’s journey to dominance in the Call of Duty scene or Birmingham Salvo’s CGS win, or our top five UK League of Legends moments here.
Stay tuned for more articles powered by GGBET UK, and see even more UK esports history content here:
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Reece is a sports journalist who has previously worked with the likes of BBC Radio Solent, Southern Daily Echo, Salisbury Radio, VAVEL and many more. He is currently studying a degree in Sports Journalism at Solent University.
