Winner: Puki Style
When the answer to the question of who won the weekend is simply "Puki Style," you'd be forgiven for asking what exactly Puki Style is. Is it a clothing line? A new Tik Tok dance? Some sort of bizarre quarantine cooking method?
The answer is none of the above.
Łukasz "Puki Style" Zygmunciak is the Polish bot laner for K1ck Neosurf, whose League of Legends team unexpectedly made it to the European Masters 2020 Spring Main Event grand finals. In the process, they eliminated favored teams like Gamers Origin. Although K1ck is a Portuguese esports organization, they had the weight of a powerful Polish fanbase behind them all rooting for Puki Style to succeed. This quickly turned into a flood of online support, with a significant portion of the League of Legends Twitter community and later some of the general esports community at large all changing their profile pictures to a photograph of Puki Style.
Lest you think this is simply a meme, Puki Style has a story of perseverance over a significant amount of time. The 26 year-old Polish bot laner has been playing League of Legends at a semi-pro or professional level since 2012. When he and K1ck qualified for this Sunday's finals, old screenshots of 2012 European Regional Finals surfaced and sure enough, there was Puki Style and Team Acer taking on SK Gaming. He's always hovered around the Challenger level in solo queue, but hadn't performed well enough to be considered a serious contender until recently. Over the past eight years, Puki Style has been on 18 different teams and moved from team to team over 20 times. This grand finals with K1ck was his chance to shine, and he had the majority of the western League of Legends fanbase behind him in K1ck's match against French organization LDLC, another team that was not expected to be in the EU Masters grand finals.
Although K1ck and Puki Style lost 0-3 to LDLC, Puki Style still had his moments to shine, particularly in Game 3 where he put up a 12/5/4 KDA on Aphelios. Here's to you Puki Style. Your determination and stubbornness paid off and even though you didn't win the series, you certainly won the hearts of many, and the weekend, in your EU Masters run.
-- Emily Rand
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Honorable Mention: Rising Call of Duty teams
In a weekend where the favorite won the tournament, it was the emerging franchises that captured their share of attention.
For pretty much all of the CDL season, only three teams have been in the conversation of the top squads in the league: Dallas, Chicago and Atlanta. With the Empire and Huntsmen having the Florida home series off, all eyes were on Atlanta capturing a second championship. They did exactly that, becoming the second two time weekend champion this season in CDL.
But, perhaps just as impressive were the performances of teams that have been struggling so far this season. A Toronto Ultra squad lacking consistency suddenly looked like a cohesive unit, surprisingly eliminating the Minnesota RØKKR, widely seen as a team due for a tournament win. Toronto were ultimately dispatched by OpTic Gaming LA, who have been at the bottom of the standings for much of the season despite a strong roster on paper. But a roster change that saw Martin "Chino" Chino make an impressive debut this weekend led OGLA all the way to the final to ultimately fall to the FaZe. Meanwhile, the New York Subliners, who also struggled with a good team on paper but no results to show for it for much of the season, got results against the Florida Mutineers, who have a tournament win this season (but were eliminated from this weekend with this loss), and the RØKKR.
So Atlanta remains in the conversation for best team in the league for now, but while this could have been a weekend for teams like Florida and Minnesota to build on past success, it ended up being Toronto, NYSL and OGLA that grabbed attention and momentum.
-- Arda Ocal