NAVI dump Falcons out of IEM Beijing with 12-0 Mirage blitz

Natus Vincere have knocked Falcons out of IEM Beijing's group stage, winning a decisive rematch that saw the reigning Major champions outclassed on both Inferno and Mirage, according to HLTV.

The two sides had already met on day one of the group, with NAVI taking that series 2-0, and the rerun followed a similarly one-sided pattern despite Falcons' early resistance.

Maksim "kyousuke" Lukin produced a 130 ADR first half on the opening map to keep Falcons alive and avoid an immediate repeat scoreline, HLTV reported.

From there, NAVI took full control. Ihor "w0nderful" Zhdanov finished with a 25-4 kill-death difference on Inferno as the map turned into a rout, and Valeriy "b1t" Vakhovskiy then dominated the Mirage decider, which NAVI closed out 12-0 on the T-side.

Falcons compounded their own problems on Mirage, losing a 5v3 and a 5v2 in quick succession, and conceding a knife kill on kyousuke to Drin "makazze" Shaqiri as the round fell apart.

w0nderful ended the series with a 1.58 rating and b1t with 1.78, both clearing a threshold that HLTV Brain data shows is almost always decisive: across 6,962 qualifying team-map appearances, teams with two players rated 1.75 or higher have won 6,957 times, a 99.93% success rate.

NAVI themselves had been the second such case, losing a map on Ancient despite both w0nderful and b1t clearing that mark, following a similar instance against HEROIC in 2024, but the duo's form on Inferno and Mirage this time proved unstoppable.

"I'm feeling amazing, I'm glad we qualified to playoffs," b1t said after the match, as reported by HLTV. "We gained so much speed as a team, we were in flow state, everything worked for us."

Falcons' defeat is their first group-stage exit on LAN this season and lands awkwardly ahead of their title defence at the next Major in Singapore, where they would have expected home-crowd backing.

Finn "karrigan" Andersen finished the series with a 0.64 rating, and the result has already dropped Falcons out of the world ranking's top five.

Nikola "NiKo" Kovač spoke to Janko "YNk" Paunović afterwards and did not dress up the performance. "I don't remember the last time we got smacked like this," he said, per HLTV. "It felt like they were much better on Mirage and Inferno. Everything we tried, we got punished."

NiKo also addressed the wider context of Falcons' season, pointing to the gap between their Cologne-winning form and their current level. "We knew before this event that we were not a title contender team," he said. "We wanted to show improvement but we failed to do so. It's a rough season for us."

Falcons lost the map pick again in the process, a recurring issue HLTV noted has undermined their recent results, while NAVI advance to the IEM Beijing quarter-finals on the back of two of the tournament's standout individual performances.