Paper Rex, who were initially unhappy with the fact that they were matched against EDward Gaming to open VALORANT Champions 2022, dramatically beat their opponent last night (31/8/22) with a 2-1 win.

Before the tournament started, PRX Benkai said on the Plat Chat podcast that the team had a lot of trauma from playing China's CS:GO team. 

So when their team was placed in the same group as EDG in this year’s VALORANT Champions, they weren't looking forward to it. But PRX managed to overcome what may be the biggest barrier of the entire tournament in the first game.

As for EDG, they made their first international debut in VCT history last night. They are the first Chinese team to make it to an international tournament. Given this, the fans flocked out and an increase of match views could be seen with at least 760,000 views.

This might be the highest number of views for an opening match in any international Valorant Champions tournament to date. As a former CS:GO team, EDG has lots of experience, intimidation, and momentum that keeps spectators and players alike paying attention to them.

Even several players from other regions commented on the team's impeccable performance during the pre-tournament press conference. They told everyone how the team went through the Lower bracket of LCQ East Asia and how dangerous the team is heading into the competition.

Now that they've been beaten in the first game of VALORANT Champions 2022, many teams might be a little more relieved, even if they still looked incredibly good in the match against PRX.

With this, PRX will move on to the winners match to fight for the top seed in Playoff, while EDG will fight with their backs against the wall in the elimination match. Who will prevail in the end?