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RNG Defeats DAMWON Gaming to Win Mid Season Invitational 2021

It’s official. The Worlds 2020 champions and the strongest team of the last two season has been defeated. It... Radu M. | 24. May 2021

It’s official. The Worlds 2020 champions and the strongest team of the last two season has been defeated. It took Royal Never Give Up 5 games to win the Finals of Mid Season Invitational 2021 but they ultimately succeeded in bringing down the South Korean giant. This performance will go down in esports history and may be indicative of what will happen at Worlds 2021. If RNG can maintain their current form, they will be very hard to beat.

Mid Season Invitational 2021 Results

MSI 2021 featured 11 teams from all over the world. And as was expected the strongest competitors dominated the event. Royal Never Give Up finished Group A with a perfect record, MAD Lions (5 W – 1 L) won Group B followed by PSG Talon (4 W – 2 L), while DAMWON Gaming (5 W – 1 L) had an easy mission in Group C. Their only loss came against the runner-up, Cloud9 (4 W – 2 L).

Rumble Stage

In the Rumble Stage of MSI 2021, DAMWON Gaming dominated the competition. But there was one major issue: the team lost both of its Bo1 matches against RNG. The complete results were the following:

  • 1st place: DAMWON Gaming: 8 W – 2 L
  • 2nd place: RNG: 7 W – 3 L
  • 3rd place: PSG Talon: 6 W – 4 L
  • 4th place: MAD Lions: 5 W – 5 L
  • 5th place: Cloud9: 3 W – 7 L
  • 6th place: Pentanet.GG: 1 W – 9 L

Thanks to these results, DAMWON Gaming was able to choose its Semifinals opponent. And they decided to play against MAD Lions in order to give PSG Talon a chance to upset their nemesis, Royal Never Give Up.

Knockout Stage

In the Knockout Stage of Mid Season Invitational 2021, DAMWON Gaming struggled against Mad Lions and had to make a comeback. From 1 – 2, they won 3 – 2 thanks to a combination we rarely see these days: Tristana + Rumble. MAD didn’t adapt very well and were caught completely unprepared. Both games ended in less than 24 minutes.

The second Semifinals match took place between RNG and PSG Talon. The PCS team tried to put up a fight and managed to win game 2 after losing the first. But RNG was simply too strong. In fact, they were so confident in what they had prepared that they decided to give up the surprise factor and just play the same combo over and over: Orianna + Morgana. And in two of the 3 games they won, they also picked Kai’Sa.

The Finals, as I stated before, was a tough match. But the audience felt that RNG was the favorite because of what had happened in the Rumble Stage. DAMWON did not go down without a fight, but in the end they still lost to the Chinese crew, who somehow managed to pick Udyr in every single game.

 

Photo credit: Riot Games