That’s besides the time i would spend outside of the gym watching fights. When i was competing as an amateur at the national level i would train 4-5 hours a day leading up to a fight. Insane training fo 6-8 hours a day and then vod reviews. If you compare the average lifestyle/work ethic of an NA pro to the lifestyle of any competitive sportsman in the world it’s appalling.īoxers wake up at 4 AM and perform grueling training for ridiculous hours. There is plenty of talent in NA, fans want more than anything for it to bloom and make us proud on the international stage, but the players need to be willing to put in the work. But seeing guys like Jojo in the top 15 of games played, while balancing scrims and other worlds practice, gives me a glimmer of hope for this region.

I don't think anyone was surprised to see 3 ten-year veteran players in Arrow, CoreJJ, and Zven playing many games because they understand the grind necessary to maintain a high level of play for many years. This worlds CQ split was the only one so far without a monetary prize, so the only motivation to play was the opportunity to practice with (and potentially get stomped by) the best players in the world, and it was good to see a lot of NA players were able to recognize this and take advantage. It's fine if you don't want to practice as much as your peers from the LPL/LCK, but please stop throwing the same BS excuses around - fans are tired of hearing them. They don't need as much practice, yet they do it anyway because they actually give a shit about their performance on the big stage. Not only do these eastern players bust their asses more in their domestic league, but they're also straight up better at the game. Overall top 3 in games played, LCK/LPL teams only:īut wait, most of the remaining Chinese/Korean players hovered around 30-40 games played, surely 30 games shouldn't be a problem?

Overall top 3 in games played, worlds teams only: Let's compare that to the rest of the ladder: Good thing that CQ was invented to solve a majority of these issues! Community pressure got it enabled for worlds too? Awesome, now the best players in the world can all practice versus each other in the highest quality environment possible! Time to run the numbers.Īccording to championsqueue.gg, Vulcan played a solid 30 games of CQ during the worlds split. There's no doubt that NA solo queue is riddled with problems, and I don't blame Vulcan for questioning whether to hop into another solo queue game that may involve boosters, win-traders/gamblers, one-tricks, or trolls.

Vulcan pop bubble shooter