(Spoiler) DRX Wins the World Championship Title!
After an epic day of games at the Chase Center in San Francisco, the 4th seed from Korea, DragonX (DRX) take down the crowd favorites and three-time World Champion team in Korea’s 2nd seed of T1. A grueling five-hour series of games leads to tens of millions of fans being stunned by DRX’s victory over T1. There may never be a League of Legends Worlds Finals that lives up to what this Finals brought; it was truly a David verse Goliath story if there ever was one.
First, we dive into a story that seems to unreal to be true but makes this Finals matchup so special. It all starts almost a decade ago in early 2013 when two players make their debut in the LCK (League Champions Korea), Faker and Deft. Both players drop out of the same High School, Mapo High School in South Korea, to pursue their dream of being Professional League of Legends player; however one is always outclassing the other.
Faker, otherwise known as the GOAT of Esports, wins his first World Championship in his rookie year of 2013 and then goes on to win two more World Championship titles in 2015 and 2016 all on the team SKT 1(now known as T1). He makes T1 the first team ever to win multiple World Championships in League of Legends and the first team to win back to back. Coming into the 2022 World Championships, Faker was on the same team with all new players around him and they were one of the few favorites to win it all, and it really looked like they would do it. They beat all the other favorites handily and made it to the finals in 2022. No one was surprised T1 and Faker made it to the finals and they were favored by everyone to win it all.
Deft, starting at the same time as Faker, was always overshadowed. He had won regional championships and other titles, but the World Championship title always eluded him. In 2014 Deft made it to the World Finals for the first time, only to be second place and since then, he had never made it back to the Finals. He hopped around from team to team and even switched regions, but could never find his way back to the finals… until 2022. DRX were never crowd favorites in any of the games they played at Worlds. Deft and DRX did not perform very well in the regular season in Korea and by all standards were lucky to qualify as the 4th seed at Worlds for Korea this year. But with every game they played, they seemed to get better, even when they were beaten down in a series, DRX clawed their way back into the series and won. Every step of the way, Deft and DRX defied all the odds and made it to the 2022 League of Legends World Finals in San Francisco.
Coming into the day of November 5th, 2022, T1 was the team to bet on. With a history of 3 Worlds titles and Faker, the player that made those 3 titles happen, it was only natural to see T1 as the clear winner. On top of this, the last Finals T1 has won in 2016 was also in America so it seemed fitting that Faker and T1 would run it back and win their 4th Worlds title. DRX had other plans for T1 though. The series at the Chase Center was so incredibly close, multiple games nearing 50 minutes in game time. The energy, tension, and emotion that surround these games was staggering. Whether it was the 10,000 chat messages a second in the Twitch Chat or the millions of sweat and tears that were shed during and after the games, no other series or game could live up to the moments that Worlds 2022 shared.
As fan of competition in general whether it be sports, esports, or any other event, the League of Legends World Finals in 2022 was truly the embodiment of what competition is and should be. It was so mind-blowingly amazing that even if you know nothing about League of Legends, it would still be worth watching.
If you missed it, here are some links to the highlights but I would highly recommend you watch the whole thing for yourself.
DRX vs T1 Game 5
Highlight Reel
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