Seven rounds. That was all Paper Rex could take from the deciding map of a Group B elimination match at the Esports World Cup on July 4, and it sent the best team in the Pacific home without a single win.
Karmine Corp, a French organization, won the best-of-three 2-1. The map scores tell the story: Paper Rex took Sunset 13-11, Karmine answered on Fracture 13-9, then ran through Lotus 13-7. Bookmakers had not seen it coming. Pre-match odds on Karmine ran between 4.00 and 4.20.
A season of little promise
THESPIKE.GG ranked it among the year’s biggest upsets, and the context explains why. Karmine had not had a strong season. In EMEA Stage 1 of the 2026 VALORANT Champions Tour the club went 0-5 and ended in 11th-12th place. The Esports World Cup was a kind of redemption: they beat Fnatic to qualify through the EMEA qualifier.
Then came the draw. Karmine landed in a group with Paper Rex, Team Vitality and NRG, and hardly anyone gave them a chance of a single win. They lost their opener. Against Paper Rex, though, they found their form.
How it went
The first map was close. Karmine led for long stretches, but Paper Rex fought back in the final rounds to take it, true to a team that is rarely out of a game. After that, Marshall “N4RRATE” Massey, the American player who had been benched by Sentinels before trying his luck with Karmine, started running down opponents on Phoenix and finished Fracture with a 23-13 kill-death line. Karmine controlled most of that map, and after reaching 10-9 they closed it out to level the series.
Lotus was one-sided. By then, THESPIKE.GG suggested, Paper Rex were “probably already disconnected” from the match, and Karmine rolled them.
For Paper Rex the result extended a poor stretch. They had lost the Grand Final of Masters London to Leviatán, and the site argued that the long season, with so many events packed close together, had worn them down. It also mentioned attempted thefts and other unfortunate events that left the atmosphere around the team “very off”. A break, it said, was probably much needed. The team’s next stop is VALORANT Champions Tour 2026 – Pacific Stage 2, which starts on July 16, followed by VALORANT Champions Shanghai 2026.
Sources
- Paper Rex are out of EWC 2026 without securing a single win (THESPIKE.GG)
- Karmine Corp vs Paper Rex, Esports World Cup 2026, Group Stage Elimination (B) (rib.gg / VLR.gg match records)
