The Moment: Regret and the first warning sign of Uzi's curse
“I’d really like to win this time,” Jian “Uzi” Zihao said in a 2016 LPL Spring press conference following QG Reapers’ stuttering victory over Masters3. He has since repeated this haunting line whenever the topic of his goal for the season re-emerges.
Uzi may have made two World Championship finals, he may have battled his way to be crowned “Solo King” at the 2016 All Stars event, but he still hasn’t won an LPL.
Uzi’s curse has nearly become tangible. Uzi joined Oh My God in 2015, and Yu “Cool” Jiajun and Yin “Loveling” Le ended the year with a public fallout where Loveling commented that he and Cool, a once inseparable duo, were no longer friends. In 2016 Spring, Kim “Doinb” Taesang and Baek “Swift” Dahoon’s fragmentation resulted in QG Reapers forfeiting semifinals. When his Royal Never Give Up mid laner Li “xiaohu” Yuanhao cursed audibly during the 2016 Summer series against Oh My God, he told press “This is how it starts; this is how our friendship ends.”
QG wasn’t even the first time Uzi’s team forfeited an LPL playoff series. In 2013 Summer, Royal Club Huang Zu’s lineup disbanded following the World Championship because Royal’s alleged refusal or inability to pay their players. In 2014 Spring, Royal’s lineup only just struggled out of the relegation zone following a rebuild, and in 2014 Summer, Korean players Choi “inSec” Inseok and Yoon “Zero” Kyungsup left right before Royal’s matches against OMG to renew their visas.
Almost every split has come with a “yes, but it’s not his fault” clause for Uzi. With drama eating at his past teams, one has to begin to wonder how much Uzi creates his fate and how much he actually is cursed.
Both Cool and Uzi admitted to a clash of expectations creating an unstable environment on OMG. Cool can’t be blamed for everything, and the collision of strong personalities has always been a killer of potentially great LPL teams.
When I interviewed Uzi that 2016 Spring, he conceded he was definitely more the type of AD carry to call his jungler bottom frequently or play far forward in lane and engage his opponent.
“I wasn’t the type of AD carry who cared very much about where the enemy jungle was, just the advantages I could get in lane,” he said. “So sometimes it was very apparent in competitions that I would get caught very easily by the enemy jungler, but I was also the type who got ahead very often because of this.”
He admitted to having been a demanding teammate, and even in 2016 LPL Summer when he paired with Cho “Mata” Sehyeong, this was apparent, if not exacerbated. Uzi and Mata put even more emphasis on the 2v2, and Liu “Mlxg” Shiyu spent less time hovering around mid lane and more time predictably diving bottom lane.
This year, we haven’t seen the same Royal or the same Uzi. Though Uzi still consistently dominates his lane and takes the majority of the team’s kills, the jungle has felt more free. The team will rely upon different lanes to carry depending upon the composition. Uzi has demonstrated a more laid-back and less demanding approach to trading in lane, taking the lead from Shi “Ming” Senming, rookie support and shotcaller of the new RNG lineup.
“Because Ming is a rookie,” Uzi said after the first week of games this year, “has only just joined the team, and now must command it, he feels a lot of pressure. I want to make our lane stronger because he has to focus on shotcalling.”
With the somewhat poignant Korean ranked account name change to “Zaijanwdqc” or “Goodbye, My Youth,” Uzi may have signaled that he has finally matured. His method hasn’t worked the past four years of his career, and he is willing to try to change completely in order to win.
Despite this, the first signs of Uzi’s curse have bubbled up. These past two weeks, jungler Mlxg hasn’t started for the team. To make matters even worse, the team claimed that all of their substitute junglers had fallen ill, allowing them to field emergency substitute Y1HAN (a player whose ID literally translates to “regret”). This matter appeared so suspicious that Riot felt the need to clarify that they will investigate the situation to verify that Royal are not lying.
Royal didn’t have a terrible dip in form with Y1HAN on the team, but an unexpectedly close 2-1 over last place Group B team Vici Gaming left Royal slumping dejectedly in the press conference following the set. For fans of Uzi, the press conference broadcast felt tense. A loss to top Group B squad Team WE and the suspicious absence of the team’s starting jungler has an unsettling familiarity with only three weeks remaining in the regular season.
Small respite came quickly.
“Don’t guess,” Royal’s fan group on Tieba declared in a stickied post on March 27th. “Mlxg will return to LPL this week.”
The team’s fans celebrated expediently. Even so, the dour visages of Royal frowning in their seats linger. RNG play Invictus Gaming this week, their steepest competition for the rest of the regular season. A thorough steamroll over possibly the strongest top and mid lane duo in the league could do a great deal to alleviate unease, to make Uzi and his fans feel that this time, it will work.
This Spring looks like the strongest chance Uzi has ever had to win an LPL. If RNG struggle against Invictus Gaming this weekend, the shadow of the curse may become self-fulfilling.
You can follow Kelsey Moser on Twitter @karonmoser.
