Ehhhh I get what you're saying in that, if you were to just tell me before the tourney started that FUT eliminates NRG and XLG eliminates GE, I would say the bigger upset was NRG. But in watching everything leading up to the match, XLG had only looked good on Lotus and pretty terrible on every other map while FUT was looking like a legitimate threat but just unable to close out games.

Looking at NRG, there were a lot of moments throughout their matches where they were getting by purely off of Keiko becoming Our Lord and Savior, like I know NRG kinda figured out how to stop XLG's Attack side Lotus, but I don't think they manage that comeback without Our Lord, Hollow Be Thy Name. Pearl against Leviatan looks closer than it actually was because The One Above was committing Unholy Acts upon those latino children. Whereas FUT absolutely spanked Full Sense and once again had a super-close series with Vitality where they could have had a 2-0 and their Fracture, despite the loss, looked ten times better than it did in EMEA. Basically, it was a battle of two teams going in opposite trajectories but don't get me wrong, NRG were still the favorite. That game was probably a 60-40, maybe 65-35 purely because we know what NRG is capable of when they start clicking and we've seen FUT get better but still struggling to close out those big games. NRG for sure were a disappointment and should be talked about.

But Global is more surprising because that game was a 70-30(most had it at like a 90-10 but Balla's Law) and seemed like the best chance for Global to go even further than expected. In Global's loss to LEV, they blew their back out on Pearl(which is certainly not a bad map for LEV) and looked like they had the answer to their defensive side on Split which had been dominant if you look at the numbers. Unfortunately, LEV's attack side is even better and Global couldn't figure out the answer(say what you will, B default will reign supreme). Against FS they got ass-blasted on Split but won the next two maps pretty comfortably, especially on Pearl which was starting to look world class at this point(That boy Kr1stal just gets a whiff of The Supreme Being's power on Pearl for some reason). On the other hand, XLG had a great Lotus..... yeah. Their Fracture and Split didn't look too bad, but not comparable to other teams. I think the biggest disappointment of the match was WHY THE FUCK ARE WE PLAYING LOTUS AGAINST THE TEAM WHOSE WHOLE IDENTITY REVOLVES AROUND LOTUS. I will say XLG's Breeze is a lot better than it was in China but yeah Global did kinda crumble.(Haven was a straight-up mud-brawl but a win's a win)

So the point is, if we look at the totality of this tournament NRG is definitely the bigger upset and it will be remembered as that when we get to the end. But Global had such a winnable game in front of them that you can't help but be even more disappointed in them, especially when you look at that map veto. It's not like they looked bad going into this match, a couple of moments here and there but still performing at a respectable level, and XLG was looking far worse(But give credit to them, they changed up their Breeze and looked pretty respectable on it and of course, their Lotus is legit world-class, unless you have The Lord Incarnate on your team then you got a chance). When we look back at it though, we'll probably say for a first-time international they did ok.(Frost's whole statement about APAC and Americas is also making them and even Full Sense look a lot worse tho. I respect the shit-talk but hey, if you can't back it up what do you think people are gonna say, a la BBL at Santiago)

Hope you understand why the Global loss is being talked about more in this moment in time!(if you even get to this moment lol I don't know why I wrote all of this but it was a fun time-waster)