At the moment, the Worlds 2022 are being held in Mexico City for League of Legends. The Argentine team Isurus had to face one of the best teams in the world, Royal Never Give Up. And the top laner ADD had prepared a pick: Teemo. The arena and the internet went wild.
What a match it was!
The weaker representatives of the major regions and the strongest teams from the weaker regions play a preliminary round at the LoL Worlds 2022: the play-ins. 12 teams start in the play-ins, only the top 4 teams survive this round and then begin at the “real World Championship”. Normally, in the play-ins, almost all teams from the smaller regions are eliminated.
In one of these preliminary matches, 2 unequal teams faced off:
- Royal Never Give Up (China) are favorites to win the tournament. With GALA, they have a world-class bot laner. RNG won the MSI tournament this year and proved their international class: In the preliminaries, they have only lost one game so far, against DRX, having won the others.
- Isurus, on the other hand, are absolute underdogs from Argentina. They had already lost 2 games before the start of this match.
For RNG, the game was a formality to secure great stats. For the Argentinians, however, it was the biggest match of the year – in 2022, hardly anyone will watch them more than during the duel against RNG.
The pick caused a stir: The top laner of Isurus, South Korean Kang “ADD” Geon-mo (25), seriously logged in Teemo.
Then the arena cheered – and on the internet, the LoL Esports account excitedly tweeted “Teemo locked in” three times.
Here you can hear the cheers and see the applause of the fans – even the casters seem incredulous:
Why is this so special? In the history of the Worlds, Teemo has now been selected for the 4th time. He is considered an absolute outsider pick for the top lane.
Normally, bulky, assertive champions like Gnar, Aatrox, or Ornn are played there. They can hold their own on the lane and provide their teams with a lot of useful abilities:
- Champions like Ornn are great for initiating fights.
- Aatrox recently changed the fate of the German esports scene single-handedly with his immense damage potential.
Teemo, on the other hand, is actually a champ for solo queue, where he can poison, blind, and slow down opponents. He thrives on staying invisible, setting traps, and surprising enemies. This has earned him a reputation as a nuisance:
- Some love Teemo
- Others really hate him like the plague
Top laner has never played Teemo as a pro, but found success in SoloQ
Why did ADD choose Teemo? According to Dotesports, ADD has never played Teemo professionally, but in the days leading up to the match, he won with Teemo in the Champion’s Queue 3 times and achieved great success.
How did it turn out? Teemo’s opponent played Aatrox, arguably the currently strongest champ on the top lane, and Teemo had a rough time: ADD secured a kill with Teemo but died 9 times. The Argentinians went down as expected without a chance.
Users on reddit discuss the game. In the end, RNG had a gold lead of 23,000 gold.
- One user says: No team has hit underdog teams as brutally as RNG in the last 2 years.
- Another says: The biggest losers are the top laners who lost to Teemo in Champion’s Queue while playing Aatrox.
- A third says: ‘Captain Teemo off duty (forever)’
‘The hamster is destroyed’:
What happened next? For Isurus, the Worlds are already over. After the clear defeat against RNG, they also lost to MAD Lions and have no chance to advance from the preliminaries. The saving 4th place that could still lead to a “Best of 5” match is already too far out of reach.
Like some other teams from smaller regions, this is it for the Argentinians, even before the World Championship really started.
RNG is expected to finish the group in second place and will then have to play a best-of-5 against a representative from the other group. Unless something very strange happens, who knows with League of Legends.
Although LoL offers so many champions, many hardly matter to the pros:
There are 5 champions in LoL that are so weak that pros don’t play them
