No one across the whole esports scene comes close to what Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok has done in League of Legends. In a storied career spanning well over a decade, The Unkillable Demon King has dazzled, anchored by consistency and killer instinct. Faker and the in-form T1 squad have eliminated the powerhouse Chinese squad Top Esports, led by star player Yu ‘JackeyLove’ Wenbo, in a dominant sweep to make it to yet another Worlds Grand Final. That’s back-to-back-to-back-to-back appearances for Faker and the boys.
If Faker wins against KT Rolsters next week, that’s gonna be his sixth world championship. That puts him on par with Michael Jordan with six chips. There was never a debate about who the esports goat was in the entire scene, but another Worlds win will just further cement Faker’s legacy at this point as the undisputed best in esports. Faker is almost 30, and his hands probably won’t last that much longer. If you’ve seen the inhuman reaction and movements he does with his hands, it really is a shock that he still doesn’t have a bad case of carpal tunnel or something much worse. Any League of Legends fan (unless you’re a Chinese fan) wouldn’t want Faker to retire anytime soon, but if this is his last great Worlds run, then damn, he made it a memorable one.
T1 barely made it to Worlds after such a mediocre year. The Faker-led T1 was a Play-in team. That’s like if Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics or Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets messed up the whole season and barely finished in 10th place in their respective Conferences. Well, that’s basically what happened to Faker in 2025. They started the year with a forgettable LCK Cup 2025 run. Then they lost to Gen.G Esports in the Finals of the 2025 Mid-Season Invitational before finishing third in the Esports World Cup. With Worlds 2025 so near, you think T1 would amp it up in the LCK 2025 Season but nope. They lost to Gen.G Esports again to finish 4th. With those recent results, fans and pundits were already expecting an early exit for T1. But Faker just showed up once again and T1 are back in the Grand Finals.
Faker is on another level
Just like most players across sports and esports, the defining quality of a superstar is their ability to perform on the biggest stage and in the biggest moments. That killer instinct is always on display for Faker at Worlds, but Faker just goes on another level against Chinese teams. He did it in 2024 against Weibo Gaming and in 2023 against Bilibili Gaming. The Unkillable Demon King denies China’s Top Esports again this year.
Finding another Faker in esports in our lifetime might just not happen. So while that man has a mouse in hand, we should just enjoy the show because it is a magical sight to behold. Next week, he takes on fellow Korean squad KT Rolster for a historic 6th Worlds crown and that man might just take T1 all the way again.
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