TES Beat BLG 2-1 in an All-Chinese Showdown to Reach the Worlds Quarterfinals
Top Esports recovered from a one-sided opening loss to beat Bilibili Gaming 2-1 in the League of Legends World Championship on Friday, reaching the quarterfinals while leaving BLG one defeat from elimination. With China's big-name teams stumbling all tournament, it is the league's lower seeds doing the leading.
The all-Chinese matchup LPL fans had dreaded arrived on Friday morning Beijing time, when Top Esports met Bilibili Gaming in the fourth round of the Worlds Swiss stage. Both teams stood at two wins and one loss: the best-of-three winner would go straight to the quarterfinals, the loser would drop into a group where one more defeat ends the tournament. TES took it 2-1 — and BLG now plays for its life.
The pairing was billed as the duel of the champion ADCs: JackeyLove, who won a world title with iG in 2018, against Viper. It began the way BLG wanted. TES lost the opener in a near-rout, outplayed from the first minutes to the last.
The round's trending topic, though, was a moment inside the loss: 369, TES's top laner, solo-killing Knight, BLG's star mid laner, in the lane. The kill trended nationwide even as TES fell behind — a scrap of pride in a game that otherwise went BLG's way, and a preview of what was coming. In game two BLG built a lead of around 5,000 gold, lost Viper in the lane, and then lost the map entirely: 369's Aatrox would not die, JackeyLove's Lucian dealt damage from every fight, and TES flipped the game to level the series. The decider ran 37 and a half minutes before TES closed it out, 13 kills to 10.
A recap by the commentator-blogger Kuang Henzi Lao — liked more than 2,600 times — caught the mood: "This game TES's mid and jungle dug a hole that big, and still won it." 369 was named MVP in both games TES won, his second and third of a Swiss stage in which he has carried a wobbling team. After the match he turned up at the interview carrying a plush doll of his teammate Zuian, promising he "couldn't let him down."
The result leaves the LPL's quarterfinal contingent looking strange. iG, back in the knockout stage for the first time in seven years, got there a day earlier. AL has already flown home. "Bet nobody expected the LPL teams through first to be the third and fourth seeds," one fan wrote, appending a wake-up call to the stragglers: 醒一醒吧 — snap out of it.
BLG's do-or-die opponent now comes from HLE, G2, LYON or LOS. Lose that, and BLG goes home among the last sixteen — while the two Chinese teams nobody picked to lead the charge play on into the weekend.