After today, Lee "Faker" Sanghyeok set an additional, now seemingly insurmountable gap between himself and the rest of the players with four World Championship titles won, which is an absolute record in LoL esports. Ten years after winning the first title with the then still SKT T1, despite a difficult year in which he had to take a break from playing due to injury, Faker managed to return to the team in time, help them consolidate from a 1-7 series in the LCK - in the playoffs, and the rest is history.
T1 entered WC 2023 with the epithet of a solidly strong team, but they were always overshadowed by the main favorites Gen.G and JDG, the champions of Korea and China. And while Gen.G defeated them in the second round of the group stage, further cementing their title as favorites, a cold shock soon followed in the form of a loss against Bilibili Gaming in the quarter-finals, after which it became clear that T1 was Korea's last hope and the team facing difficult task to prevent the LPL final in Seoul.
He successively defeated the T1 all Chinese team, Bilibili Gaming, then LNG in the quarter-finals and finally the biggest obstacle to the new title JDG 3-1 in the semi-finals. He demolished JDG all year long, winning both seasons of the LPL and MSI 2023, but T1 seemed to get stronger and stronger as the tournament went on, all five players playing at an extremely high level of play that JDG simply didn't match. had a match, and it turns out that neither does Weibo Gaming.
The final itself started with somewhat unexpectedly aggressive T1 picks in the form of Lee Sin for Moon "Oner" Hyeonjun in the jungle, Ahri for Faker Yone for Choi "Zeus" Wooje.
Weibo managed to hold on for the first 20 minutes of the game, but Zeus and Oner started to give more and more headaches to the opposing players, and already in the 22nd minute, T1 made an Ace with only one lost hero, and then it was already clear that the first game would not last long. T1 took a 1-0 lead seven minutes later, and Weibo tried to respond in the second game by banning Zeus' Yone.
Weibo Gaming's top laner Kang "TheShy" Seungyok, the 2018 World Champion and the main hope of the Chinese team, was the tragic in the second game. Just a few seconds after making a beautiful defense under his tower from a gank, he returns to the fray and loses a 1v1 against Zeus and it looks like the trouble starts for Weibo from there.
After a big fight for the third dragon, T1 gets four kills and increases the lead to 4,000 gold and with an extremely interesting line-up of heroes consisting of Gwen, Nocturne, Sylas, Draven and Renata completely dominate Weibo for a convincing 14-1 victory.
We saw a similar outcome in the third game. Weibo managed to keep up somewhat in the early game, but at minute 18 we again see a big team fight for the third dragon where the legendary Faker takes advantage of the opponent's confusion to get a triple kill with Akali and herald a huge celebration from the Korean fans.
After that, T1 scattered around the map, they get new kills on the top, which allows them to take Baron and further increase their advantage. That the game is over was clear in the 25th minute when Weibo with four players tries to catch Zeus on the cannon, but instead they experience a complete fiasco, T1 cleans them and with the last attack on nexus they reach the trophy that eluded them in the final last year.
Zeus was declared MVP of the finals after a truly incredible game in all three games of the finals.
