Chalk up one more Olympic-sanctioned gold medal finish for China: they just won the entire Asian Games 2018 League of Legends exhibition tournament which took place in a span of 3 days at Mahaka Square in Jakarta, Indonesia (which is friggin’ huge FYI).

China fought hard against South Korea, but in the end, it was a 3-1 victory for the former. For LoL fans, this grand Olympic-level match was basically a rival battle between China’s Uzi and South Korea’s Faker, arguably two of the best damage dealers in LoL pro-tournament history.

For comparison, here are Uzi and Faker’s best plays, respectively:

Both players were the best when it came to dealing damage, and their teammates help facilitate that. But it was clear that China had the better teamwork, communication, and momentum when compared with South Korea.

This was evident in the third and fourth match where China stole the Baron buffs and pushed aggressively, despite Faker, Score, and Peanut’s best efforts to hold the Korean fort. Moral of the story: all-star players don’t make up a stellar team if they can’t synergize for nuts. Truly this was the year of the dog (in Uzi’s case). 

South Korea was humble enough to participate in a post-match interview and apologized to the fans and the media. “We lost because we performed poorly.”

South Korea player Score said, “although we were a team composed of players from different teams, I believe our team synergy wasn’t too bad.” He said that they made too many mistakes during the series.

“So, for the third match (Grand Finals against China), we focused on drafting our pick and bans so that we can have stronger laning champions to pressure China.

“Overall there are some big mistakes in the game. Going to game 4, we thought that during game 1, 2, and 3, we made a lot of mistakes that we shouldn’t have made in the game. So we’re trying to take a safer approach.”

“We drafted Tahm Kench to provide some safety bumps, but overall we also made some critical mistakes that led to our defeat.”