100 Thieves Stun Falcons at BLAST Bounty: Gizmy Beats the Cologne Champions Twice in Two Months

100 Thieves played their first-ever Tier 1 CS2 match and immediately knocked out the reigning IEM Cologne Major champions. Falcons lost 1-2 after taking Nuke, and a decisive 1v3 clutch from sirah on Anubis sealed one of the biggest upsets in BLAST Bounty's history. More interesting than the scoreline itself is one specific person standing on the other side of it.

Gizmy has now beaten Falcons twice in two months, with two different rosters. That stops being a coincidence and starts looking like a specific weakness one particular IGL knows how to exploit.

What happened at BLAST Bounty

Falcons entered this series as reigning IEM Cologne Major champions under captain karrigan. A confident win on their own map pick, Nuke, made the series look like a formality. Instead, 100 Thieves reversed the result across the next two maps, and the last one, Anubis, came down to a two-round margin after sirah single-handedly won a 1v3 at the exact moment it mattered most.

Why this is more than a routine upset

For 100 Thieves, this was the organization's first appearance at Tier 1 CS2 full stop. The club returned to the game in November 2025 with an international roster built around names that keep winning Majors elsewhere: Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz, Håvard "rain" Nygaard, with Lukas "gla1ve" Rossander behind the bench as coach. That project raised an obvious question: could a lineup of proven veterans, none of them young prospects anymore, keep pace with the current scene. Eliminating the reigning Major champions in their debut match at this level answers that question immediately, and the answer is yes.

For Falcons, this is a second shaky start to a season in a row, arriving right as the team prepares for the Esports World Cup. A Major title doesn't inoculate a roster against an early exit in the next event, and a series where you have to claw back after losing your own map pick is a bad sign heading into another major stop on the calendar.

The common thread: Gizmy

This is where it gets genuinely interesting. Right before BLAST Bounty, 100 Thieves swapped in-game leaders, replacing Ag1l with Gizmy. He's the same player who led Monte past Falcons on Dust2 at the Cologne Major itself, just weeks earlier. Put plainly: Gizmy has beaten Falcons on Dust2 at two straight events, with two different rosters, in under two months.

One win over a Major champion is easy to write off as a bad day, a form dip, or an unlucky map draw. Two wins by the same IGL over the same opponent, with two entirely different sets of teammates, a few weeks apart, add up to an actual tactical pattern. Falcons clearly struggle against the specific map-reading style Gizmy brings to the table, and until they fix it, any future opponent led by a similarly minded caller gets a real shot at running the same script back.

What it means for the rest of the tournament

100 Thieves proved more in one match than plenty of teams manage across a whole qualifying run. A roster built on experience rather than raw young talent just got the best possible calling card. That doesn't guarantee a deep run through the rest of the bracket, BLAST Bounty still has plenty of dangerous teams left in the field, but any comparison to CS2 comeback projects that only exist to lose to younger rosters stops holding up after a result like this.

For Falcons, the fallout runs deeper than a single lost series suggests at first glance. The team is walking into its next big events with a repeated, specific tactical problem, not a general dip in form that's easy to explain away as fatigue or one off night. Fixing something like that takes real analytical work, not just rest before the next event.

SPAWNSY verdict