Top Esports vs RNG – Saturday
This is going to be one of the best matches of the 2022 LPL Summer Split regular season as this is a rematch of the Spring split winner semifinals and grand finals. Both times RNG ended up with a victory, and while the semifinals encounter was fairly one-sided, the grand finals was a much closer fight and TES came really close to taking the throne.
Things look very similar between now and then, except for the fact that RNG is playing with a different top laner now. Right after their successful 2022 MSI run, they fielded Chen “Breathe” Chen in the top lane. Other than that, it’s going to be the same level of League of Legends we are used to seeing from both teams, and seeing how both teams come in similar form, this is going to be a banger for sure.
Top Esports have only dropped 1 series out of their 7 played so far. It was in their encounter against JDG Gaming in the opening week where Top Esports couldn’t keep up, and even though the series went all the way to the 3rd game, JDG was clearly the better team by a lot. Luckily for them, that was just a bump on the road, as they went on to win all of their following matches, but RNG is a whole different beast to face.
While RNG is definitely still considered one of the strongest teams in the Chinese region, something seems a bit off, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s going on. But now they are going up against Top Esports, one of the best teams in the league, which means that they can’t slack. Said that, I think that RNG is past their MSI hangover and they are starting to get back on track.
Edward Gaming vs Victory5 – Sunday
Sunday will feature a fight between the reigning world champions Edward Gaming and Victory5, the only team that hasn’t dropped a single series so far this split, you can already tell why this series is going to be incredible to watch.
Before the split began, there was a rumor running around, saying that V5 never intended to play with Rookie throughout the first month of the competition, which is why we haven’t seen him play just yet this split.
In his place, their academy mid laner Dream was performing on the rift, and to be fair he did it quite well in all of their games, but a month has passed already, and Rookie is back on the field.
They’ll be going up against Edward Gaming, though this is not the same dominant EDG we saw in 2021, and I’m not talking exclusively about the summer split as they didn’t have a good time in the spring split either.
Something important to keep in mind is that besides JDG and WBG, the 2021 world champions haven’t faced any other team from the top-half of the standings, which means this is going to be their hardest challenge so far.
