One of the most emotional matches at the World Championship (Worlds) 2022, as international viewers acknowledged, was the confrontation between Top Esports (TES) and GAM Esports (GAM). At the moment when only two normal auto-attacks were needed for GAM to lose, the representative of VCS turned the tide. When the last player in TES’s attack fell, the entire stadium erupted. On every forum, the League of Legends (LoL) community could not believe that GAM had defeated the LPL Summer 2022 runner-up.
Even the players of TES could not believe they had lost to a team from the small VCS region. Although GAM is also the VCS champion, the scale difference is too significant. Not to mention, TES’s roster includes 2 World Championship winners and 1 mid-laner genius who was once compared to Faker. Yet, they lost, and this defeat significantly contributed to TES’s exit right after the Group Stage of the 2022 World Championship.
This loss haunted the TES players to the point that recently, while live streaming and interacting with fans, a comment was sent to Knight regarding the possibility of TES meeting GAM again. Immediately, Knight clearly displayed his attitude towards this. In fact, he even used a popular meme in the League of Legends community: “Am I going to meet GAM? No, no, I don’t need to ‘jump out of line’. I don’t need to ‘jump out of line’ because I already ran away (from TES to join JDG). I just ran away.”
The meme “jump out of line” was originally used to refer to the mistakes and failures of JackeyLove – one of the worst-performing players of TES in the match against GAM. However, this content became more popular and was reused by many players to tease each other. Even JackeyLove himself was reminded of this meme by Meiko when they met at the 10th anniversary event of the LPL.
But Knight’s response also indicates that international teams are genuinely concerned about GAM at MSI 2023. The representative from Vietnam always knows how to create surprises, and VCS fans can trust GAM to achieve remarkable feats at this year’s MSI after a long absence.