Remember, after the disastrous 2021 Worlds in Iceland, the old FunPlus Phoenix lineup officially disbanded, with only AD carry Lwx continuing to wear the Phoenix jersey in the LPL. However, while Doinb, Tian, and Crisp found new homes, Nuguri – the top laner who won the 2020 Worlds with Damwon Gaming – decided to take a long break.
Due to Nuguri’s absence, witnessing T1’s Zeus dominate veteran top laners in the LCK Spring 2022, while DWG KIA – Nuguri’s former team – struggled with Hoya and Burdol, made the LoL community, LCK fans in general, and DK fans in particular miss “Bull Guardian” even more. This year in the LCK Spring, Gumayusi even compared the championship race to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The only difference is that Doran lost to Zeus while Hoya/Burdol simply could not compare.
But recently, a piece of extremely good news for DK fans and the LoL community is that Korean media has confirmed Nuguri will return in the upcoming Summer 2022 in the colors of his old team DK. If this is true, it would be likened to a blockbuster and help DK solve their top lane personnel issues – a weakness for this team in the recent Spring.
At the end of the recent Spring split, it was discovered that Nuguri had started to try hard on the ranked ladder again. In fact, “Bull Guardian” even climbed the Korean ladder with an astonishing performance: around 20 ranked games, equating to 20 hours of gaming each day. At that time, rumors about his return made the LoL community extremely excited. Additionally, it was discovered that Canyon was also helping Nuguri practice. When DK lost to T1, Nuguri also stopped climbing the ranks. Some opinions suggested that this defeat helped DK “wrap up” the Nuguri deal.
Many opinions have been expressed regarding the news about Nuguri. Many believe that if Nuguri returns in Summer 2022 and quickly integrates with the new DK, this will be the perfect addition for the former LCK champions. Not to mention, Zeus could have a worthy counterpart in the top lane, and the matchup between Zeus and Nuguri could decide which team is the new champion in Summer 2022.
However, neither DK nor Nuguri has commented on this rumor. Therefore, everything remains speculative and may only be announced in the near future, possibly after MSI 2022, when teams have started finalizing their rosters for Summer 2022.