The organiser put Falcons’ captain next to the retiring FalleN during the Hong Kong semi-final and asked fans to choose.
karrigan has replied with a single “Ok” to a post from BLAST that asked fans which of him and FalleN is retiring. The organiser posted it on Saturday at , while FURIA were on their way to a 2-0 win over Falcons in the semi-final of BLAST Rivals 2026 Season 2 in Hong Kong.
The post showed the two veterans side by side as player cards, with the text “Which one is retiring? YOU DECIDE”. FalleN’s card read 18 kills and 17 deaths. karrigan’s read three kills and 17 deaths.
FalleN has said he will retire at the end of the year, and BLAST had already joked about it on Thursday. The 36-year-old Dane answered on Saturday evening.
Banter or a line crossed
BLAST’s post had been viewed more than 670,000 times by Sunday morning. On Reddit, a thread about it passed 1,000 upvotes, and the community was split. Some called it harmless banter. Others argued that a tournament organiser, which is meant to be neutral, should not mock one player’s performance in the middle of a match.
It came on a hard day for karrigan. He finished the semi-final 19-36 with 45.4 ADR, including 9-23 on Falcons’ own Ancient pick. On Dust2, the crowd booed him after a round was replayed from 4-2, a round in which he had picked up a USP kill after YEKINDAR dropped out of the server. Both teams had agreed to the reset, as we wrote in our report from the semi-final.
Over the event, karrigan finished with an HLTV rating of 0.84, 35th of the 40 players in Hong Kong going into the final.
“We cannot rely on the individuals”
Falcons’ coach Danny “zonic” Sørensen did not single anyone out. Speaking to James “BanKs” Banks after the exit, he said the team had “really big difficulties in creating an overview as a team and listening to each other during the game”, and that some players fell into tunnel vision.
We cannot rely on the individuals, this is simply impossible, we have to rely on team play, and yeah, I’m also getting tired of saying this all the time.
zonic called the season “not good enough” and said Falcons “have to evaluate at the end of the season, and see where we can go from there”.
Five months after a Major
The numbers sit next to a big year. karrigan led Falcons to the IEM Cologne Major title in June with a 3-0 over FURIA in the final.
Falcons go out of Hong Kong in 3rd-4th place. Their next event is the PGL Major Singapore, where they start in Stage 3 on 2 December.
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