The cancellation of MSI 2020 is something that has left the entire League of Legends community feeling regretful. However, for the famously “optimistic in every circumstance” members of G2 Esports, they found a very legitimate and convincing reason to feel happy that the MSI tournament could not take place this year.
Christopher “Duffman” Duff – G2 Esports’ analyst, recently expressed a rather “cheerful” mood when joking on Twitter that the absence of MSI also means G2 no longer has to “faceplant” against the representative from VCS, specifically Phong Vu Buffalo:
“In Europe, we don’t have the concept of ‘MSI being canceled’. We call it ‘G2 won’t lose to Phong Vu Buffalo in the group stage this year,’ and I think that’s fantastic.”
In MSI 2019, where Vietnam was one of the two co-host regions, G2 Esports crowned themselves champions in a truly deserving manner, becoming the first Western team to win this title.
However, there is one thing that haunts Jankos and his teammates, which is that among all the opponents they faced, Phong Vu Buffalo (now Dashing Buffalo) – the representative from the host VCS region, is the only opponent that the MSI champions could not overcome.
In both matches in the group stage, G2 Esports lost twice to Phong Vu Buffalo. Meanwhile, on the other side, those two victories against the European champions were also the rare wins that Zeros and his teammates achieved in this tournament.
MSI 2019 can hardly be considered a successful tournament for PVB, but ultimately, the “Buffalo Herd” accomplished a very important mission – that is, to advance through the Play-in stage to bring back one more slot for the VCS region in the Group Stage of Worlds 2019.
Additionally, those two victories against G2 Esports were also a significant mark for the VCS representative, in a match-up between two teams pursuing aggressive play styles and featuring top-tier players like Zeros, Caps, and Perkz.
Of course, if PVB could have made it past the group stage and faced G2 Esports in the knockout rounds, it would have been entirely possible for G2 to easily defeat PVB for revenge, as the team’s performance in a Bo5 is incredibly fearsome, so much so that even the mighty SKT couldn’t handle the heat. Furthermore, those defeats against PVB, fortunately, did not significantly affect G2’s chances of progressing in that group stage.
But that didn’t happen, and not having the opportunity to avenge their two group stage losses to the representative from VCS is likely what the G2 members regret the most, right?