Worlds 2018 champion Kang “TheShy” Seung-lok and Worlds 2019 champion Liu “Crisp” Qing-Song have made it back to the final!
This year, Weibo Gaming and Bilibili Gaming only faced off once in a best-of-five series back in LPL Spring 2023, where BLG swept them and eliminated them from playoffs.
In LPL Summer 2023, WBG were eliminated by LNG Esports 3-2 in their first match. They had to fight their way through the regional playoffs, besting Top Esports and Edward Gaming to qualify for Worlds 2023 as the fourth seed.
Making it past Swiss stage, they swept NRG in the quarterfinals to set up an all-LPL semifinals where they emerged victorious, edging out the MSI 2018 runner-ups 3-2 in a crazy series, defying all expectations.
TheShy did some heavy lifting for Weibo Gaming against Bilibili Gaming at the Worlds 2023 semifinals
The opening minute of the opening game was already pretty wild. At level one, TheShy was forced to blow all his Summoner Spells, pots, and enter lane with a quarter HP.
Mind you, he didn’t take Teleport either — he took Flash and Ignite to combat Aatrox’s healing through lane dominance.
Despite his apparent disadvantages, he controlled the waves well, and still had pushing power compared to Chen “Bin” Ze-Bin’s champion. Thanks to a gank from Wei “Weiwei” Bo-Han’s Bel’Veth, TheShy picked up his first kill 11 minutes in.
He translated his lead into team fights, timing his flash perfectly to avoid Zeng “Yagao” Qi’s Syndra stun to grab a double kill.
In the very last deciding team fight, he landed a perfectly-placed Equalizer to clip the enemy AD carry, bringing Zhao “Elk” Jia-Hao’s Xayah down to half health.
Finishing with a 8/1/3 KDA, TheShy dished out 23.2% of the team’s damage, even more than his bot laner despite the level one hiccup.
BLG fought back in game two on the back of Yagao’s Sylas who continually stole high-value ultimates from WBG, which made all the difference in team fights.
This is also the first game at Worlds where we witnessed a full-on 2v2 ranged bot lane: Varus and support Ashe versus Caitlyn and support Lux.
Despite the loss, TheShy kept it competitive, and almost turned things around in a late game base defence when he found an opening kill onto Elk’s Varus.
Game three and four saw him diving deeper into his shenanigans, selecting Graves and Quinn top which resulted in one win and one loss. Building lethality Graves, he replicated his Rumble performance, finishing with a perfect 6/0/2 KDA, dishing out a whopping 25.9% of the team’s total damage.
He explained during the post-game broadcast interview that he’s always looking for counters to meta champions, which is why these two champions surfaced.
With the series tied 2-2, everything came down to game five where he played a conventional Ornn who is here to guarantee superior late game scaling with Living Forge.
WBG got aced 20 minutes in, but less than five minutes later, they won a pivotal fight at Baron and secured the buff.
The one thing they got going was dragons. With Kalista on their draft and a focus on bot side (leaving their top laner to play weak side), they secured three before tussling for Mountain Soul which would boost their team composition further.
Wang “Light” Guang-Yu was the one who shone in this head-turning battle. Working with TheShy and Crisp, they brought Peng “XUN” Li-Xun’s health down very fast, forcing him to Smite but missing the dragon.
A well-timed Hostile Takeover further isolated the jungler from his teammates, as they picked them off one by one whilst nabbing soul for themselves.
Taking the backseat this time around, tanking, initiating, peeling, and dying for his team, TheShy and Weibo Gaming closed it out in 35 minutes for the 3-2 victory, qualifying for the Worlds 2023 final.
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Li “Xiaohu” Yuan-Hao has qualified for Worlds seven times over the course of his career with Royal Never Give Up save for this year. This is the first time he’s made it to the Worlds final. For Light and Weiwei, they will also be making their final debut.
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