Esports|Mobile Legends: Bang Bang|AP.Bren — The Seven-Game M5 Final in Manila

On 17 December 2023, AP.Bren and ONIC Esports played the seventh and deciding game of the M5 World Championship Grand Final inside Rizal Memorial Coliseum in Manila, where more than 6,000 spectators watched the publisher-sanctioned Mobile Legends: Bang Bang season conclude. MOONTON Games organized M5 as the fifth edition of its world championship for the global mobile title, and the offline tournament used Mobile Legends: Bang Bang patch 1.8.30B rather than a PC adaptation or a separate regional client. The Grand Final was a best-of-seven series: each game placed two teams of five on opposite sides of one battlefield, and victory required destroying the enemy base, so the first team to win four complete games took the championship rather than accumulating points across maps. AP.Bren fielded KyleTzy in the jungle, FlapTzy in the EXP lane, Pheww in mid, Super Marco in the gold lane, and Owgwen as roamer, with Ducky as head coach; ONIC Esports represented Indonesia and entered the final after sweeping AP.Bren 3–0 in the upper-bracket final. The Manila side then built a 3–1 lead in the title series, but ONIC won Games 5 and 6 to erase that margin and force a winner-take-all seventh game, making the last game at the coliseum the only remaining route to the trophy for either team. AP.Bren recovered in Game 7 and completed a 4–3 series victory, converting its lower-bracket return into the M5 championship after it had defeated Blacklist International to earn the rematch. The result made AP.Bren the first Mobile Legends: Bang Bang professional organization to win the M Series twice, following the same organization’s M2 championship under the Bren Esports name in 2021; FlapTzy and Pheww were members of both title-winning lineups. The pin marks the Rizal Memorial Coliseum building within the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex on Pablo Ocampo Sr. Street in Malate, not the nearby football stadium or the EVM Convention Center used for M5’s earlier stages, and the cover photograph shows the exact coliseum façade in 2013 rather than the esports match. Primary sources: https://en.moonton.com/news/45.html ; https://www.facebook.com/MLBBEsportsOfficial/posts/our-official-map-of-the-rizal-memorial-coliseum-for-this-weekend-during-the-m5-d/388529840205561/ Independent cross-checks: https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/sports/othersports/891642/ap-bren-conquers-onic-esports-seizes-m5-crown/story/ ; https://esports.inquirer.net/35286/moonton-games-reveal-m5-world-championship-venues-and-schedule ; https://liquipedia.net/mobilelegends/M5_World_Championship Venue: https://psc.gov.ph/psc_site/facilities-and-venues/ ; https://mapcarta.com/W22480442 Photo: Ramon FVelasquez, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RMSCjf9787_02.JPG