One of the most popular and best players in the League of Legends is Yilang “Doublelift” Peng (26), the bot laner for Team Liquid. He has been a 7-time champion and star of the US LoL league LCS in recent years. But now he has lost his starting position. He admitted to having played for a while without much motivation. Now he is sitting on the bench.
Doublelift has shaped the LCS in recent years like few others. His move from Team Solo Mid to Team Liquid plunged TSM into a crisis and led to 4 consecutive national LoL championships with his new team.
However, 2020 has not been going well so far for reigning champion Team Liquid. The LoL star apparently wanted to comment on this.
Not playing well, not really trying
What did he say? Doublelift admitted in an interview with Inven on February 21 that he had “not been motivated lately.” At that point, his team was at 3-5: That was pretty bad.
He explained in the interview: It was pretty clear that he had not been playing his best LoL lately and he hadn’t really tried.
He apologized to the team for the collateral damage caused by having a player who was neither highly motivated nor in top shape.
Doublelift was apparently frustrated that the current Spring Split of the LCS was not offering any “Circuit Points” that qualify for the World Championship. As a result, the Spring Split 2020 became significantly less important and he became bitter about it.
In the interview, he said he is now motivated and wants to attack.
This was the plan: Doublelift apparently wanted to convey the mood in the interview: He acknowledged his mistake and now the turnaround is coming.
He said he hit rock bottom when they played against “Golden Guardians” and he clearly lost in a 2vs2 against 2 players he believed were much worse than he and his support partner CoreJJ.
That was a wake-up call, and he would now step up. He told himself:
Wow. Am I really capable of dying like that? Of playing like that? That was really confusing for me, so I have to make sure that doesn’t happen to me again.
Doublelift on his game against Golden Guardians
The interviewer thanked him for the “honest interview.” The fans would surely appreciate that.
What went wrong: Doublelift caught an illness after the interview and had to miss a match weekend. For him, the struggling Team Liquid substituted in backup player Tactical as bot laner.
With Tactical, TL won both games that week. They are now at 6-6 and in a significantly better 3rd place with a winning streak of 3 victories in a row.
Tactical was so convincing that Twitch streamer Iwilldominate recommended that he continue with Team Liquid.
It is more important to have a motivated player than a “mechanically better” player who, on camera, says that he is not interested in the split.
Doublelift is benched, apologizes to the team
This is what happened now: Team Liquid announced that they will continue with Tactical for now. Furthermore, Team Liquid has signed another bot laner: Richard Samuel “Rikara” Oh. He is now supposed to play for the second team, the Academy team, instead of Tactical.
Superstar Doublelift is now on the bench.
However, he is not reacting angrily to this but instead is apologizing to his teammate.
He has now rediscovered his passion for playing and competition but too late. Now he must work to earn back the trust of his teammates.
How important and strong Doublelift is: Doublelift is one of the strongest and most popular players in the US league LCS:
- He has been a champion 7 times since 2015
- just in the last 3 years, he won 5 out of 6 championships
- in the All-Star voting 2019 he received the most votes together with Bjergsen – he is one of the most popular players
- he is also a gifted trash talker with strong opinions about everything and everyone – he is not afraid to ruffle feathers
- on Twitch, he has 1.34 million followers
Yet apparently, the “honest interview” combined with his slump in 2020 was enough for yesterday’s successes to no longer be sufficient to guarantee a starting position today.
At 26 years old, Doublelift is already relatively old for a professional League of Legends player. Many pros are considered “seniors” at 23 years old in LoL, thinking about the end of their careers.
Therefore, the career downturn for Doublelift might not only be due to a lack of motivation but could also be age-related.
- Similar to what happened to Doublelift now, the pro and 3-time champion Pobelter just could not find a team at the age of 23.
- The star bot laner of Cloud 9, Sneaky, was also replaced before the season. He was also like Doublelift essentially a starter and the “face of his team”.
