Showmatches are a great way of captivating fans by pitting their favorite players against each other, albeit in a less serious way. Since both parties are just looking to have fun, it can make for some funny moments and callouts, presenting legendary players in a refreshing light. This showmatch, however, was particularly successful, garnering almost a quarter of a million views on Twitch, where it was livestreamed.
What happened in the showmatch?
The showmatch teams were captained by Alexey "OverDrive" Birukov and Vadim "Evelone192" Kozakov, with s1mple on the side of OverDrive and donk on the side of Evelone192. The teams played a total of three maps: Mirage, Dust2, and Nuke - truly a classic selection of maps that new and old pros would be familiar with!
The showmatch, as a whole, played out as many had predicted. Seeing how donk has been in his peak form recently, given that he’s also set a new kill record, while s1mple is on a hiatus where, naturally, he isn’t practicing nearly as much as even your average professional CS2 player, the former dominated the stream.
On Mirage, s1mple scored 22 kills with 10 deaths while donk had 18 kills with 17 deaths. On Dust2, s1mple scored 13 kills with 16 deaths compared to donk's 40 kills with 6 deaths. However, on Nuke, despite donk's team winning, s1mple scored 27 kills / 17 deaths while donk scored 26 kills / 14 deaths.
Even though both players were neck-to-neck on Mirage and Nuke, donk’s insanely positive KD on Dust2 was the highlight of the showmatch that has gotten everyone talking about it. While this doesn’t mean that donk is definitively the better player, it goes to show that new talent keeps on emerging, bound to leave old-school professionals in the dust if they can’t keep up.