The greatest player in League of Legends history, Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, is only three best-of-five matches away from his third Summoner's Cup.
His team, SK Telecom T1, had an up-and-down first week in the group stages of the 2016 World Championships, going 2-1 with a loss to the Flash Wolves. They bounced back in Week 2 with a perfect 3-0 scoreline to head off to the quarterfinals in Chicago for the first leg of playoffs. SKT T1 will meet Royal Never Give Up, an offshoot club from the Royal organization that Faker defeated in 2013 to win his first World Championship.
ESPN sat down with Faker following the group draw.
"I think my performance in the first game of the tournament [against Cloud9] was excellent," said Faker. "As for the rest of the games, I'm not happy with myself. I'm going to keep reminding myself of the first match and trying to [match that level]."
Faker steamrolled Cloud9's Nicolaj "Jensen" Jensen in his initial game of the tournament, ending the blowout victory with a 5/1/4 on Syndra while also possessing an over 90 CS advantage. While Faker felt his other performances dropped off after, the stats would say differently, as he had glowing performances against I May in both games he played (7/2/13 combined Kill/Death/Assist ratio) and another dominant performance on Viktor when he met C9 again earlier in the day with a statline of 7/2/8.
"I didn't encounter anyone I think is an amazing, top-tier player," he said. "But I do remember [Flash Wolves'] Maple as a much-improved player. Since 2013, he was an OK player back then, but he's become a very good player now."
"I don't think the remaining teams' mid laners are extreme, top-tier players," he continued. "And yet, I feel like my current capability of performance is not as good as my [peak] level. I'm guessing if I were to encounter the top-tier mid laners in the tournament, I'd probably be an equal match in the laning phase."
As for his showdown with Royal Never Give Up this upcoming Friday against old rivals Jian "Uzi" Zi-Hao and Cho "Mata" Se-hyeong, Faker will let his actions do all the talking. "I'm not the type of player that provokes [an opponent] before a game," he said politely when asked if he had any words for his next challenger.
Finally, on the topic of old foes, I brought up the player that started Faker's ascent to superstardom all those years ago -- H2K Gaming's starting mid laner Yoo "Ryu" Sang-ook -- and the possibility of the two meeting in the Summoner's Cup Final.
"I felt that last year Ryu wasn't performing as well as he could have done," he said. "This year, I'm feeling that he has improved a lot. I can see Ryu is playing with confidence, so he's doing great."