Owen thrives on the thrill of competition, particularly in Valve titles. He reached a peak of 8,500 MMR in Dota 2 and remains a regular contender on the Southeast Asian leaderboards. Beyond his main forte, he has extensive experience in the Counter-Strike 2 esports scene and a deep understanding of esports betting.
Olivia Richman is a seasoned esports journalist who has worked with Inven Global, Esports Illustrated, Esports.gg, and more. As an editor and writer at Esports Insider, she loves telling unique esports stories, especially within the FGC. When not working and gaming, Olivia loves collecting Kirby plush, eating sushi, and driving her cars at the track.
Image Credit: Valve / The International Team Spirit has officially become the first Dota 2 team to have lifted the Aegis of Champions three times, doing so at TI15 in Shanghai last week. Their conquest this time around was a little harder than their previous one, as they had to take down tournament favorites TEAM VISION 3-2 in the Grand Final of the event.
This big win meant Illya “Yatoro” Mulyarchuk and Magomed “Collapse” Khalilov became the first three-time TI winners in history. Though both players did their fair share of work, I think Yatoro’s story throughout the event was more interesting to follow, as he was directly up against Alan “Satanic” Gallyamov , who was looking like the best carry player at the event.
The Grand Final really showed us an anime battle between the greatest carry in history and the greatest carry of today – but are both of those titles still accurate after the Aegis was lifted?
Anyone who’s followed the Dota 2 scene a couple of months before TI would agree that TEAM VISION’s 18-year-old carry, Satanic, has been looking like the strongest carry player in the world.
Satanic’s name has been hovering around as a top-tier carry for over a year or so, but 2026 felt like it was finally his year. With the help of his newly-appointed coach Clement “Puppey” Ivanov, Satanic was putting on monstrous performances and farming at lightning speeds, carrying his team to win the title at DreamLeague Season 29 and the recent Esports World Cup.
The teen was clearly the talk of the town heading into TI15, and TEAM VISION also entered the event as the favorites to win it all. When TI15 actually started, the hype wasn’t just talk, as Satanic was breaking records left and right, allowing TEAM VISION to steamroll the competition and cruise through the Swiss Stage with a 4-0 record, also taking down Team Spirit along the way.
Image Credit: Valve / The International On the other hand, we had Yatoro, who showed up to Shanghai with a pretty different story. He already had two Aegises to his name, but we haven’t really seen the flashy Yatoro we all knew this year. Team Spirit had a turbulent season, with their carry player having pretty quiet performances leading up to the biggest event of the year.
Though Yatoro was still regarded as the greatest of all time, he really felt like he was human this year, and wasn’t one of the highest-rated carries before TI15 started. Even the likes of Alimzhan “watson`” Islambekov and Ilya “Kiritych” Ulyanov looked better than him throughout the year.
As a result, many fans and analysts had Team Spirit written off this year. Even community content creator Dota2PowerPoints had them pretty low in his pre-event Power Rankings , and he wasn’t crazy – I didn’t expect Yato…