Onic PH ousts Area77 to keep MSC title dream alive

Onic Philippines bounced back with a vengeance, thrashing North America’s Area77 with a 2-0 victory in their do-or-die group stage clash at the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Mid-Season Cup 2025 late Saturday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

A day after falling prey to Aurora Gaming of Turkey, the Philippine bets regrouped and vented their ire to eliminate an all-Filipino Area77 and advance to the lower bracket semifinals of Group B. 

The win gave Onic Philippines another chance at advancing to the playoffs, but it will have to face Malaysia's HomeBois first in another must-win situation later tonight. 

"Para sa akin, hindi kami na-shock [sa talo namin sa Aurora] kasi alam naman naming nagpur-prepare din 'yung Aurora para sa amin," Onic's mid laner Frince "Super Frince" Ramirez said in the post-game press conference.

Onic head coach Tony "Ynot" Senedrin added: "It's just the same, we just used our one life, I guess. So it was really up to us to look at the loss objectively, make sure that we do know the opportunities we have."

Onic needed just 14 minutes and 12 seconds to secure Game 1 against Area77 with Super Frince making a surprise Kagura pick, delivering a spotless KDA of four kills and three assists. 

The game then snowballed in Game 2 when Onic's jungler Cyric "K1NGKONG" Perez delivered three early kills against his counterpart Lance "Shiro" Nones (Suyou), who sustained four deaths in the first four minutes.

Area77 could not recover from that early collapse as the reigning world champions maintained map control the rest of the match with K1NGKONG dictating the tempo and the rest of Onic executing near-flawless plays. 

A lopsided 23-4 kill spread saw K1NGKONG unleash 14 kills and six assists against just one death as Onic lived to fight another day. 

—JKC, GMA Integrated News