In the early morning of October 21, the knockout stage of the 2022 World Championship officially kicked off. The opening match was viewed as a complete mismatch between JD Gaming (JDG) and the last representative from the West – Rogue (RGE). The simple reason is that JDG are the reigning champions of the strongest region in the world – LPL.

As predicted by the majority of viewers, JDG claimed a convincing victory and eliminated RGE from the 2022 World Championship. In fact, JDG even defeated their opponents with a score of 3-0, giving RGE no chance to retaliate. Many viewers commented that JDG performed significantly better in this match than they had in the LPL.
After the match ended, player Hope revealed the reason why the whole team pushed themselves to perform exceptionally well. It is known that JDG’s strong 3-0 victory over RGE was a birthday gift for their mid-laner – Yagao, as they competed away from home.

“Today we tried harder than ever to defeat our opponents as quickly as possible. This victory feels like a birthday greeting that the whole team is sending to Yagao, who was born on October 19. Thank you for ‘carrying’ us all this time, Yagao!” – Player Hope shared.

With a convincing victory over RGE, JDG has reached the Semifinals, where their opponent will be a highly motivated T1 after defeating RNG. This is expected to be an early Finals of the tournament this year, as both JDG and T1 are in extremely high form across all positions. Even now, many viewers predict that JDG and T1 will need 5 games to determine which team will advance to the Finals of the 2022 World Championship.