Image credit: LoL Esports
G2 Esports go 2-0 with only a best-of-three series left to qualify for the Knockout Stage of Worlds 2023.
It was a nail-biting game between G2 Esports and Weibo Gaming in what was arguably, the best and closest match to date at the League of Legends World Championship. And it was G2 who came out on top in the end after they managed to come back from the brink of death against Weibo to take the game. That win now puts them in the advancement series alongside Gen.G Esports and LNG Esports.
As for Weibo, that loss doesn't mean they are in trouble just yet as they now drop to the 1-1 bracket of the third round. However, they are joined by an esteemed list of teams that include T1, Fnatic, Cloud9, MAD Lions, and NRG Esports. Weibo did have a chance to end but sadly, that was not the case as G2 threw everything they had in the game, which included Rasmus "Caps" Winther and Steven "hans sama" Liv who had a triple kill each to start and end the comeback respectively.
The early-to-mid-game progression was fairly even between G2 and Weibo with the latter taking a massive lead towards the end-game. But this was when it started to go bad for Weibo, who got outplayed in the river to gift Caps his triple kill. This was also when G2 started to slowly bring themselves back into the game. And after another great teamfight, G2 was banging on Weibo's top lane.
But it was Kang "TheShy" Seung-lok who managed to pull off a great tower defense after Yuan Hao "xiaohu" Li early on in the fight. TheShy was able to kite around G2's abilities to buy time for the rest of his team to fight back. By then, G2 had ran out of gas and needed to retreat, only to be caught out by the now-alive xiaohu who instantly teleported to the team's top-side jungle to catch out the rest of G2.
Caps even went for the backdoor attempt as Weibo's Nexus was left open but he did not have enough damage to take it out. But by then, the gold lead had already dipped massively for Weibo, who led by as much as 8.7k gold at one point. G2 soon got caught out in the jungle near Weibo's base that saw hans sama go down early to proc the Guardian Angel. But it was enough for G2 to position themselves to take the fight back to Weibo, which led to hans sama dealing the killing blow with his triple kill to seal the game.
That win also meant that G2 is the first and only team at Worlds to defeat an LPL squad. However, their run will not get any easier as they have to go up against either one of two teams from the LPL in LNG Esports as well as JD Gaming/Bilibili Gaming or the LCK's Gen.G Esports - all of which aren't easy teams to play a best-of-three against.
As for Weibo, they now drop to the 1-1 bracket of the third round with a few more games left for them to play before their Worlds 2023 fates are determined. With this being Weibo's debut at Worlds, their performances so far have been far better than many could have anticipated. They still have a long way to go and their journey to the Knockout Stage now gets a lot more interesting.
