At this point, I really don’t care who wins Worlds, because regardless who wins the final best-of-five, the winner is still Korea. I mean, I’m aware that the scenario I was hoping for was like wishing the 90’s Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan would do good each year, but it’s still never a smooth journey for the most competent of competitors year after year. And this was supposedly the year that the rest of the world was thought to have caught up in League of Legends talent, and frankly that wasn’t wrong, it’s just that it just wasn’t enough.
But a week from now, will the finals of the 2017 League of Legends World Championship – pitting Souh Korea’s SK Telecom T1 against, South Korea’s Samsung Galaxy. This is also a rematch of the previous year’s Worlds, and since all spectator events love to raise the importance of scenarios by stating first times for things, this is the first time that the same two teams have made it to the finals of Worlds, ever and in consecutive years much less, even in a league just seven years old.
LCK Fall Split memes, right here.
However, it’s not just the fact that it’s two Korean teams that has me all smug and arrogant, it’s also the narrative in which such a matchup came to fruition. Worlds this year has been taking place in China, the region that has yet to hoist a championship in the seven years of competitive League, despite often being perceived as the #2 region in the world. But don’t tell the Chinese that, because in their own opinion, they’re gods amongst mortals who can’t be touched in competitive League of Legends, except for the fact that, they’ve never won Worlds, and have almost never beaten Korean squads with very few exceptions.
Not only did Korean squads advance to the finals of Worlds, both did such by defeating Chinese squads in the semifinals. The narrative of Chinese teams, in their home country, in front of gargantuan and raucous nationalistic Chinese fans, jobbing to dastardly Korean adversaries with superior macro-play, mechanics and team fighting capabilities is pretty much the nerdiest Korea boner that I could possibly get.
Whereas Samsung Galaxy pretty much demoralized Team WE in four games of a best-of-five, leading to a pretty anti-climactic advancement to the finals, it was the SK Telecom vs. Royal Never Give Up matchup that was the star of the semifinals, since it not only went the entire five games, but at one point, Royal had a 2-1 series lead over the defending champions. But in typical RNG fashion, Royal simply couldn’t close out the series, and dropped two, heart-breaking and demoralizing losses to SKT, silencing an entire arena as their Korean overlords took the stage with their victory bows to end the day.
The best part was that this was the year where SKT was supposedly vulnerable. They lost to Longzhu Gaming in the finals of the LCK Summer Split, dropping them to an “unfavorable” #2 seed out of Korea. Top-laner Huni was supposedly struggling and vulnerable to the tilting and inferior macro play compared to rivals. SKT couldn’t figure out what to do with the jungle between Peanut and the perma-sub, Blank. And no more professional League players endured as much criticism than the bot lane of Bang and Wolf, whom despite being two-time champions in their own right have been considered “weak” and “inferior” and other pejoratives. All of this exacerbated by the fact that SKT was nearly upset by the unheralded Misfits Gaming the quarterfinals, needing all five games to dispatch the plucky European squad.
The recipe was all gathered together for an epic takedown of SK Telecom at the hands of Royal Never Give Up, but when they all got together in the oven in Shanghai, things simply didn’t go as planned, and for the umpteenth time, Royal gets bounced out of Worlds, by a Korean squad. In front of thousands of their own fans, on their home soil. It really doesn’t get any better than that, for me.
SK Telecom this year is like the 1998 Bulls, when people thought Jordan was too old, the team couldn’t hang with all the upstarts like the Miami Heat or the Indiana Pacers, and that the Utah Jazz were too good. But in spite of all the overlooking and underestimating, the Bulls marched right into the Finals and won yet another championship amidst all criticisms.
Regardless, next weekend’s Worlds finals are basically gravy, for me. As amused as I would be to see SKT become four-time champions in a league just seven years old, I’d be just as satisfied to see Samsung win as well, which would make them two-time champions. For those keeping count, aside from the fact that Europe’s Fnatic and Taiwan’s Taipei Assassins won the first two world championships, the titles have since gone to SK Telecom, Samsung, SK Telecom and SK Telecom.
No matter who wins next weekend, the rest of the League scene can suck it and cry moar over their Korean overlords.
