Hanwha Life Esports: A championship 8 years in the making

Hanwha Life Esports were crowned regional champions after last night's LCK Summer 2024 Grand Final against Gen.G Esports, but the win is a lot deeper than the title.

After a five-game grand final, HLE deposed Gen.G and was crowned as the LCK Summer 2024 champions. The roster, consisting of Choi "Doran" Hyeon-joon, Han "Peanut" Wang-ho, Park "Viper" Do-hyeon, Yoo "Delight" Hwan-joong, and coach Choi "DanDy" In-kyu, was in the limelight as they enjoyed their win yesterday.

Gen.G Esports were well on their way to what could be the final chance for the Golden Road in LoL Esports history. They have won every single tournament since the beginning of the year (sans Esports World Cup) and were having a generational run regionally. Gen.G's dreams of this were wrecked by their loss to HLE, however.

The Golden Road, after this year, will be significantly more difficult due to LoL Esports moving to a three-season year and slotting an extra international event. This year, teams only had to win four competitions: Regional Spring, MSI, Regional Summer, and Worlds. Next year, teams need to win six for the Golden Road, adding the Regional Winter and the new international event to the above competitions.

One little tidbit of information arose amidst HLE's win. Jeong "Chovy" Ji-hoon has a 15-2 record against Zeka. At first glance, this looks to be heavily in Chovy's favor, but the two matches Chovy lost were the most meaningful ones: Worlds 2023 Grand Final and LCK Summer 2024 Grand Final.

Zeka was awarded the Woori Bank 2024 LCK Summer Finals MVP. His qualification to the grand final also dethroned the "Four Kings of the LCK." Since 2019, only four mid-laners have made it to the LCK finals: Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, Heo "ShowMaker" Su, Chovy, and BDD.

Believe it or not, the Hanwha Life Esports LoL team went through an arduous eight years to make and win the LCK finals once again.

HLE began their LCK journey in 2018 as the spiritual successor to ROX Tigers after they acquired their roster and slot. By this point, it had already been two years since ROX qualified for the grand final stage.

The last time ROX basked in the glory of the grand finals was in Summer 2016. Notably, they also had Peanut as their at this time. They won the best-of-five against KT Rolster and were the champions of LCK Summer 2016. After this, though, ROX would never qualify for the grand finals again.

Post-acquisition, the organization would still find trouble chasing the regional championship. They went through multiple iterations of teams, but the fact that they could not lift the trophy nor even qualify for the grand final did not change. In fact, they had trouble simply qualifying for the playoffs until 2023.

This brings us to today. HLE was strong in the regular season of LCK Summer 2024, finishing second behind Gen.G's record-breaking 17-1 run. Their placement earned them a bye in the playoffs, where they first met T1. After a prompt 3-0, they advanced to the upper bracket final. Here, they met Gen.G Esports, which went how everybody expected: a win for Gen.G, 3-1.

This dropped HLE to the lower bracket where they once again encountered T1. Like their first meeting, this went HLE's way, 3-1. This win qualified them for the grand final, for the first time in eight years, and Worlds 2024.

In the words of a user on the Chinese social media platform Weibo: "8 years ago it was ROX, 8 years later it’s HLE. Everyone else went from black hair to gray, but only Peanut went from gray hair to black."

Peanut was the common denominator of ROX' and HLE's wins, but many other organizations have him to thank for their trophies. After this recent championship against Gen.G Esports, Peanut has seven championships under five organizations.

His first win was with ROX in 2016, followed by SK Telecom T1 in Spring 2017. He transferred to Kingzone DragonX in Spring 2018, leading them to victory and a runner-up placement in MSI 2018. After a short stint in the LPL, he went back to the LCK in 2021 to play under Nongshim RedForce, but was unable to find success there.

Peanut would then go to Gen.G in 2022 and win three consecutive seasons (Summer 2022, Spring and Summer 2023). His journey with the organization ended after Gen.G's early exit in Worlds 2023.

At this point, HLE could have been Gen.G's sister team. Peanut, along with Doran and Delight, were all part of the Gen.G 2023 roster. This led many to poke fun at the LCK Summer 2024 grand final between Gen.G Esports and Hanwha Life Esports. They called it a battle between sister teams, looking back when actual sister teams like Samsung Blue and Samsung White were in the league.

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