T1 dominates Weibo in clean sweep to win Worlds 2023
T1 hoisted their fourth Summoner’s Cup last night after a clean sweep of Weibo Gaming in the grand finals of the 2023 League of Legends World Championship. T1 entered Worlds 2023 as the 2nd seed from League of Legends Champions Korea and only dropped two games during the entire tournament.
T1 continued to be innovators of the meta in the grand finals as they had all tournament, with support Ryu “Keria” Min-seok continuing to favor ranged supports and top laner Choi "Zeus" Woo-je pulling out carries like Yone and Gwen. Mid laner Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok was kept off of Orianna and Azir – far and away his two most played picks at Worlds – and opted to bring back his signature Ahri in game 1 to go along with jungler Mun "Oner" Hyeon-jun’s Lee Sin. T1’s composition needed to get off the ground early to win, and they did just that by shattering WBG’s first nexus in just over 30 minutes.
T1 brought more new flavor to the draft in game 2 with a Sylas for Faker and a Nocturne for Oner to go along with Zeus’ Gwen and a Draven/Renata Glasc bot lane pairing. Oner and Zeus continued their domination of Kang "TheShy" Seung-lok and Wei "Weiwei" Bo-Han in the top/jungle 2v2 and spearheaded an even more dominant win than the first game to bring T1 to championship point.
Game 3 saw WBG mid laner Li "Xiaohu" Yuan-Hao throw the gauntlet down and pick Azir into Faker, to which the T1 mid laner answered with his first Akali of the tournament. With Zeus on Aatrox and Oner on Lee Sin, game 3 was the most convincing of the series, and Faker showed that over a decade after his professional debut, he can still make flashy plays and take over games single-handedly.
Faker doing it for his team pic.twitter.com/1p1cbJS5s6
— LCK (@LCK) November 19, 2023
T1 had already beaten Bilibili Gaming in the swiss stage, as well as LNG Esports and JD Gaming in the two previous series leading up to the finals. The sweep of Weibo last night makes T1 undefeated against all four representatives from China’s League of Legends Pro League. Zeus was awarded finals MVP for his immaculate performance.
In the interview portion of the post-game ceremony, Faker dedicated his fourth world championship to his teammates and made it clear he has no plans to retire anytime soon.
Esports/gaming journalist since 2016. He's covered live competitive gaming events from coast to coast in the United States and is based in the esports epicenter of Los Angeles, CA. Over the better part of the last decade, he has developed a unique voice in the LoL Esports space as a columnist, built relationships with premiere organizations, told captivating stories through interviews and features and authored industry-shaking reports all the while maintaining razor-sharp understanding of the game at its competitive peak. He has published exclusively with Inven Global for four years and has been freelancing/writing independently since parting with the publication. If you need someone to tell a story, let's chat.