Your League of Legends world champions: DragonX Esports

Photo from Riot Games

Edited by Lianne Lee

With an incredible performance featuring famous musical artists such as Lil Nas X, the Finals for the League of Legends World Championships 2022 began. The intense match between the team known as the greatest of all time and the team that wasn’t expected to make it this far into the tournament, SK Telecom T1 against DragonX Esports respectively, broke the tournament’s peak viewership and made the top headlines of Esports news. 

SK Telecom T1, commonly referred to as T1 for short, is one of the best League of Legends Esports teams worldwide, winning up to 3 world championships: 2013, 2015, and 2016. The back-to-back world championship-winning team has been on a dry streak in the past few years, but many adoring fans expected a large comeback from them after making it into the finals for the 5th time. 

DragonX Esports, or DRX, on the other hand, has not had the same history as T1. Having not ever won a world championship, they performed incredibly well with 5 wins out of 7 games and becoming the top performer in their group. They shocked the world in the quarterfinals by knocking out the team, Edward Gaming, the previous year’s world championship winners. 

Having made a name for themselves during their quarterfinal match, DRX made it into the finals and after a hard-fought battle, took home the title of World Champions. Interestingly, a member of DRX, Deft, studied in the same middle school as a player on the opposing team, Faker and they both debuted in 2010. However, Deft has had a much less successful history than Faker, having never played in a world championship final until just over two weeks ago. But now, Deft’s long-awaited and long-deserved dream has come true, and he can finally claim to be the world champion. Congratulations to DRX!