**Early Saturday morning on January 31, 2015,** I woke from a pre-LoL Pro League nap. Due to the influx of South Korean players that had recently made their way to China's LPL, I had begun following the region more closely, juggling LPL viewing with my dedication to what had previously been the OGN Champions tournaments and KT Rolster.
As I sat down at my computer to queue up the stream, Kelsey Moser (now with Evil Genuises, then former LPL English creator and English-language LPL enthusiast) messaged me a few minutes before the first match, asking if I was excited.
Excited for what? I asked. The opening series that night was between Gamtee and Energy Pacemaker wasn't exactly a headlining matchup. Gamtee were a team better known for their cute panda hoodies at the time than strong gameplay and their opponents, the winless Energy Pacemaker, were down at the bottom of the standings alongside them.
Xiaohu's debut, she responded.
Kelsey told me that Xiaohu had been making a name for himself in solo queue and on his previous team MD E-Sports Club in a few TGA events. He had changed his name from Angelbeats (a nod to the Jun Maeda-helmed Japanese anime) to Xiaohu, which meant "Little Tiger." He played Xerath in both of his matches against Energy Pacemaker in his LPL debut. Xiaohu and Gamtee took the second game in the best-of-two set, Energy Pacemaker took the first. It was Energy Pacemaker's first game win that year.
Xiaohu's debut wasn't fantastic, nor was it inauspicious. At the end of the match, English-language LPL casters Jake "Spawn" Tiberi and Max "Atlus" Anderson didn't find his performance worth commenting on positively or negatively, only mentioning that he had an easy setup for his Xerath ultimate thanks to a poorly-placed Jarvan IV ultimate from Energy Pacemaker. Xiaohu didn't seem like a bad player, but he also didn't catch my attention in any way. I wouldn't remember this night at all if it wasn't for Kelsey asking me if I was excited to see Xiaohu's first LPL match.
He had an average performance.
Xiaohu is now a two-time Mid-Season Invitational champion, winning the title as a mid laner and as a top laner. He's being discussed among former teammate Jian "Uzi” Zi-Hao as one of the best Chinese League of Legends players of all time.
Whenever a young player with burgeoning solo queue or trainee experience turns of-age and debuts, there's always a small hope or expectation that they'll immediately trounce their opponents on the Rift. Theirs will be a debut of pure talent. Like the greatest player to have ever touched the game, Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, they'll find themselves up against one of the best players — for Faker's debut it was Kang "Ambition" Chan-yong — and solo-kill them in a dazzling display of raw mechanical skill.
Most players don't have a fairytale debut. Most players are like Xiaohu: they have a middling debut on a popular meta champion with no hints as to how they'll grow as a player or what legacy awaits them in a few years' time. Most of the time as viewers, we don't remember players' first matches unless something remarkable happens.
**DAMWON KIA mid laner Heo "ShowMaker" Su's first** LoL Champions Korea performance was against then-Gen.G mid Song "Fly" Yong-jun. It was the opening night of LCK games in the new home venue of the league: LoL Park, just outside of the Jonggak subway stop in downtown Seoul. ShowMaker played Galio and Urgot into Fly's Sion and Irelia respectively. DAMWON and ShowMaker won both of those games.
Atlus, now an LCK caster, and Christopher "PapaSmithy" Smith were the voices of the English-language cast the night that ShowMaker entered the LCK. Much like Xiaohu's debut, ShowMaker was not mentioned at all. Instead it was about the team as a whole. Damwon was entering the LCK for their first-ever match after being crowned scrim gods against foreign teams who had traveled to South Korea for Worlds in late 2018 and against LCK teams going into the 2019 Spring Split. Top laner Jang "Nuguri" Ha-gwon, and jungler Kim "Canyon" Geon-bu were the more well-known rookies on the team. Canyon's Kha'Zix took over the first game, and Nuguri's Vladimir took over the second.
I remember a vague impression of Nuguri's Vladimir after that night, but nothing else about ShowMaker's first match; nothing that would tell me about the phenomenal player he was about to become.
"This journey to where I am hasn't been easy for me," ShowMaker said in the MSI finals teaser. "I worked really, really hard to get where I am now."
Whenever I watch or cover an international League of Legends event, I think about how it's more difficult to remember beginnings than endings. Endings are abrupt because there is a finite end to a tournament. A team wins. There's a celebration where players look past falling confetti with glassy eyes and either unshed tears or waterworks before shuffling offstage. At least one player remains stunned throughout the entire process, as if they're still looking ahead to what's next and realizing that this is the end, or at least an end.
At Damwon Gaming's 2020 World Championship win, this player was ShowMaker, wide-eyed and unassuming, almost blending into the background as Nuguri shifted back and forth animatedly next to him in their post-match interview. ShowMaker's smile recalling his World Championship victory in the 2021 MSI teaser was similar to his smile onstage then: small and creeping, breaking onto his face in moments as if he was trying (and failing) to hold it back.
ShowMaker is someone who feels losses viscerally. In that same teaser video, he admitted that he becomes angry after losing. He also feels the weight of expectations heavily, even now that he's learning to have more fun with his team.
"Since our team is getting a lot of high expectations I think victory has become a natural thing," ShowMaker said. "Something I am obligated to achieve. I don’t know since when, but now after winning it’s more like, ‘I’m just relieved we won.’”
It's telling that ShowMaker's happiest moment of his career is the moment he qualified from Challengers Korea to the LCK with his team. After all, that wasn't an ending. It was a beginning.
**When Xiaohu role-swapped to top lane,** I made a joke that Xiaohu had always been a top laner, he just hadn't been in the top lane. This was due to the fact that top laners, particularly ones on Royal Never Give Up, had a history of being given very few resources. Even at the height of their 1-3-1 split-pushing style in 2018, RNG still focused on 5v5 teamfighting and funneling resources into star bot laner Uzi. Xiaohu was already a smart player with a wealth of experience who had, at times, received comparatively fewer resources than other LPL mid laners. He already seemed to have a top laner mindset in the way that he controlled side waves and played more for the team.
This swap marked a new beginning for Xiaohu after a steady stream of community criticism from both domestic and international RNG fans since he first joined the organization later in the 2015 season as their mid laner. The move itself was seen as either an odd decision born of desperation or met with curiosity but little optimism, especially after RNG went 2-2 in their 2020 Demacia Cup group — Xiaohu's top lane debut — and failed to make it to the next round.
"The Demacia Cup loss still appears vividly before my eyes," Xiaohu said in a Weibo post. "We were also made fun of and rated as a B+ team. We were ridiculed and mocked."
Xiaohu is used to bearing the brunt of community ire. He's learned to compartmentalize it and use it to his advantage, citing himself as a moodmaker on his team.
"I think the reason why RNG is so playful and always joking has a lot to do with me," Xiaohu said in the same opening teaser video. "If a team wants to go far, it's like a newborn child. It needs a very strict father and a nurturing mother. I think Ming and I fill these roles perfectly."
He followed this up with more serious words of advice to younger players: that the moment you choose to be a League of Legends player, you only have championships as your goal.
Championships mark endings. Trophies and medals are finite proof of winning something. For the winners of the Mid-Season Invitational, Royal Never Give Up, and their finalist opponents, Damwon KIA, I only have one piece of advice.
Turn this ending into another beginning.
Credit to [@icrystalization][1] for the Chinese translation of RNG Xiaohu's Weibo post
[1]: https://twitter.com/iCrystalization/status/1396561807360266243
