You have to stumble and fall before rising to greatness.
In case you missed it, Riot Games just released the anthem for the League of Legends World Championships in collaboration with K-pop group NewJeans. The song is a straight banger but what was even more hype was the music video that accompanied it. The Worlds 2023 anthem follows the story of Kim “Deft” Hyuk-kyu, one of last year’s world champions. His road towards becoming a world champion was full of struggles and heartbreak, all epically retold in one music video.
The video starts with Deft going to Mapo High School, coincidentally the same high school as Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok. The latter would go on to establish himself as one of the greatest League players of all time, the former would need a few more years to be in contention.
Deft would make his Worlds debut in 2014 playing for Samsung Blue, unfortunately falling to sister team Samsung White in the semi-finals. He would return in 2015 playing for Chinese team EDward Gaming (EDG) but this time only making it to quarter-finals.
It’s here where Deft’s quarter-finals curse begins. For the next six years he would bounce between not qualifying to ending his Worlds run at the quarter-finals. One can only imagine the frustration Deft must have felt for years of never being quite good enough.
Now we enter Worlds 2022 and things look bleak for Deft and his former team of DRX. They were coming in from the play-ins stage, the lowest point where you can enter Worlds in and a spot where no champion has ever emerged from. Undeterred, DRX climbed up and defeated everyone who stood in their way.
The quarter-finals curse was finally broken after Deft defeated 2021 champions EDG and his former teammate Tian “Meiko” Ye. The two dreamed of winning Worlds together but both took separate paths to achieve their goals. After that, Deft would face down another former teammate, Choi “Doran” Hyeon-joon, in Gen.G Esports. Gen.G was Korea’s 1st seed but DRX somehow overcame all odds and convincingly beat them 3-1.
At the very end was T1, where Faker and another former teammate, Ryu “Keria” Min-seok, awaited Deft. What went down was one of the best grand finals in Worlds history. And after 10 years of hardships and challenges, Deft was finally a League of Legends world champion, all immortalized in the Worlds 2023 anthem.
Banner image from LoL Esports.
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