Pedro "LucifroN7" Durán rattled the Warcraft community during the opening day of the BlizzCon event, where he successfully made his way through Nikolaus 'SonKiE' Cassidy, Dmitriy 'Happy' Kostin and SK's June 'Lyn' Park on his path to the grand finals.

Durán's participation at BlizzCon was no easy feat. He came to the qualifier as the clear underdog, having to take on veteran opponents like Yoan 'ToD' Merlo and Kim 'SaSe' Hammar to make top three in order to advance.

As far as preparation went, Durán believes it's not where you practice, but how you practice, "I've been playing custom games, and I don't think you really need to play in the leagues," as he explains.

In Spain, Durán stood his ground against the European elite and earned himself both respect and a spot in the grand finals. The question was, could he hold his own against not only the top European competitors, but the Korean and American ones as well?

SonKiE was the first to fall
LucifroN's initial match was against SonKiE, a powerful human competitor from America. LucifroN, though the lesser known, was expected to take the match given his continually strengthening performance over the past few weeks, compared to SonKiE's arguably weakening performance. Durán took the set with a convincing result of two maps to nil.

Then came Happy
LucifroN went on to face Happy in the second round, one of the players he had lost to in the qualifier. Happy had just come from knocking ReMinD into the lower bracket in the previous round. An impressive result, though a poor indication on how he might have fared against LucifroN, as undead is considered one of ReMinD's weakest match ups, while LucifroN is quite the opposite. Durán was able to take the set two to one, knocking Kostin into the lower bracket and advancing to take on fellow orc June Park.

Lyn dropped down as well
Park is the definition of a formidable opponent for any orc player, though as of late has been in what you could call a slump. Mind you, there's a lot to be said for a player who continues to finish top three at events while in a "slump".

Lyn took the first map on Secret Valley rather convincingly, the game was pretty short and Lyn retained control for the most part. Isolating the initial match between the two, it looked almost certain that Lyn would walk away victorious, though we saw a very different LucifroN on the following two maps.

Game two took a bizarre turn when LucifroN selected a map he had turned off in ladder, Centaur Grove. LucifroN's harassment was far superior on Centaur Grove scoring several Blademaster kills, including one epic battle between the two heroes across half the map. The second map went to LucifroN.

The third and final map was Melting Valley where LucifroN opened things up with a jaw dropping creep jack, stealing a big chunk of experience from Lyn with a peon. As was the case in the previous match LucifroN's harassment was top notch. He was able to take the third map sealing his victory two to one over Lyn.

What happens now?
Park will go on to face Kostin in the lower bracket final, the winner of which will go on to face Durán in the finals for 25,000USD.

Regardless of what happens tomorrow Durán has already accomplished an immense amount in a very short period of time, both in results and in status. His name went from hopeful whispers, to optimistic buzz and now full-blown fan frenzy, all in the space of a few weeks.

Like Du Seop 'WhO' Chang before him, Durán has shot out of obscurity in a very short period of time, capturing the community's imagination with his passion and drive.

From BlizzCon it's on to the WCG grand finals in Germany, where we'll find out just how much staying power the community's fascination with Durán really has.