The first rounds of the MSI knockout phase have been played and delivered straight away. From the perspective of the Western teams, however, the matches once again showed why Asia’s dominance will not be broken this year either.
Next to the World Championship, the Mid-Season Invitational marks the most important competition of an ongoing League of Legends season. At the “small world championship”, the best teams of a split meet and play for fame, honour and, with 250,000 US dollars, a lot of prize money. In 2023, the MSI will take place in London under a new format – for the first time, the spectators can look forward to a double elimination, which will be used for the first time in an international tournament, at least in the League of Legends cosmos.
It is also this system that Western teams have to thank for a continuation in the current competition. G2 Esports, MAD Lions, Golden Guardians and Cloud9 may have emerged from their respective leagues as champions, but there didn’t seem to be much of that in the duel with the representatives of LCK (Korea) as well as LPL (China).
That 3-0 feeling 🥰
📸 @lolesports pic.twitter.com/AjC1Vvuulh
– G2 League of Legends (@G2League) May 14, 2023
Only G2 Esports managed to take a round off opponents GEN G in a best-of-five, for the rest of the teams it went 0:3 each into the lower bracket.
EU vs EU, NA vs NA
This was followed by a real battle for survival between the individual regions themselves. While G2 had to deal with the MAD Lions, the teams of the Golden Guardians and Cloud9 met in the LCS-internal duel. In the end, the boys from C9 and G2 prevailed and will now meet the teams from GEN G and BLG.
In the upper bracket final, record world champion T1 will face reigning LPL champion JDG Gaming. This will include a reunion with former GEN G AD Carry Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk, who moved to China from Korea at the end of last year.
