Recently, T1 announced the addition of young rookie Lee “Clozer” Ju-hyeon from their trainee roster to the official lineup. Along with this, the young star born in 2003 also officially signed his first professional contract for a duration of 3 years, committing to a long-term relationship with T1 and promising to become the successor to Faker’s position in the future.
Moreover, since he is not old enough to compete professionally, Clozer can only play for T1 starting after July 23, 2020.
However, this isn’t even the most notable aspect, as his debut inadvertently put T1 in a “laugh or cry” situation. Normally, when announcing a new contract, fans only discuss the rookie’s potential and send their congratulations, but when the post announcing Clozer’s promotion to the first team was published, many T1 fans expressed their confusion because they didn’t know who Clozer was.
As it turns out, Clozer, along with Gumayushi and Canna, are among the most promising young talents in T1’s trainee roster. Clozer even ranked high alongside Gumayushi in the top tiers of the Korean Challenger rank. This was when Clozer stepped into the spotlight, but unfortunately, during this time, he went by the name… Closer. So many T1 fans only knew that among their young talents, there was a promising star named Closer, without any knowledge of who this Clozer was.
In fact, very few people even know what Clozer looks like, so even when a post was shared with his portrait, no one could be sure if this Clozer was the same as that Closer.
Ultimately, T1 had to clarify this situation. It was simply that Clozer decided to change his name from Closer to Clozer. T1’s president, Joe Marsh, explained in more detail that the name change was due to another player in the LCS already registering the name Closer, and T1’s trainee did not want to have a duplicate name. The president even joked that “there should have been a 1vs1 solo duel to see who rightfully owns the name.”
Looking back at T1’s transfer history, fans also discovered that Clozer has a rather amusing habit of frequently changing his name. Since joining SKT in May 2019 as a trainee, Clozer has had a total of 5 nicknames, with 4 of them being changes back and forth between the names Closer and Clozer.
It seems that even after becoming a professional player, this young man, like many other gamers, is still “confused” by the challenge of: “How to create a cool in-game name?” And as a result, we witnessed a rather “clumsy” announcement of a rookie from T1 that also brought tears of laughter.