Photo Credit: Riot Games
The Korean monopoly over League of Legends continues in Season 7 as once again SK Telecom and Samsung Galaxy meet in the grand finals for a rematch of the previous Worlds Finals. In the semifinals, SK Telecom struggled to take down Royal Never Give Up in a gruesome five game series while Samsung won three straight games after dropping the first game to World Elite. Although SKT are the defending champions from last year, their road to the finals has been rocky so far with both their quarterfinal and semifinal series going to a full five games whereas Samsung have had a relatively easier road, sweeping their quarterfinals match against Longzhu.
Looking at SKT’s road to the grand finals, they once again denied Uzi a chance to win the world championship with their defeat of RNG. However, RNG gave them a true run for their money when they took a 2-1 lead against SKT. If not for Faker’s enormous performance throughout the series on Galio, SKT would have likely lost. However, their star player managed to make big play after big play to tie and win the series in the end.
Samsung struggled against World Elite in their first game, netting only one kill to WE’s ten. However, in the second game, Samsung’s Cuvee turned around his Game 1 performance and helped his team cruise to the victory. Games 3 and 4 were simply a snowball of Samsung’s momentum as they comfortably won both games to advance to the finals.
With Worlds coming a full circle from last year, Samsung has a chance to redeem themselves for the close five game loss they had to SKT last year while SKT look to continue their third win in their streak of victories. With another world championship for SKT, they are looking to add four total for their organization and Faker while a win from SSG would net their organization their second world championship and the first for this current roster. The finals begins on Friday, November 3 with the opening ceremony at 11:30 p.m. PST with the match starting at 12:00 a.m.