EPTOk.
This isn't a word I'm particularly fond of. There's a reason why the term became mostly defunct, even in the Korean Brood War community. However, it was used, and applied to specific players for a reason, and since the ideas it contained plays into the history of professional Brood War. I want to state my opinions on the topic, so that the idea of how this word described the players whose careers have been finished years ago now can be somewhat preserved.
Now, here are my thoughts, not that it should matter much. Bonjwa is not synonymous with the phrase, "greatest of all time", nor should it be given out like some career achievement awards. I have time and time again beaten down these zealots who wanted Bisu to become a bonjwa, and would pop up every single time Bisu would go on a 10 game winning streak or a deep run into an individual league, and ask "is he bonjwa now?". The answer was no.
The term bonjwa has nothing to do titles, win percentages, or how much "achievements" a player has managed to gain, although they are the key metrics to judge a player both holistically and as a bonjwa. What I mean is, there are no specific criterion upon which you hit, then "unlock" the title of bonjwa. The similarities the bonjwas had (the most famous being the 3 MBC Game titles being won into an OGN StarLeague title), are mere coincidences that has nothing to do with the actual terminology of the phrase bonjwa. The phrase is given when you are clearly head and shoulders above the rest of the competition for a extended period of time, and has much more to do with domination, than overall excellence.
This wasn't a problem until the post-sAviOr era, since all the bonjwas were also the greatest players the scene had ever seen. So the terminology could be used more liberally, and without confusion. The problem started when Bisu had some of the traits that some of the bonjwas had (such as his consecutive MSL title wins), without the most important aspect of being head and shoulders above the competition, but the irrational factions of his enormous fan base kept on insisting that somehow Bisu could be considered a bonjwa once he won the OGN StarLeague title, and the bonjwa issue popped up again and again, with people forgetting that gaining the title of bonjwa isn't as simple as finishing a checklist.
So it doesn't matter that Jaedong has achieved more than the other bonjwas over his overall career, or even during his specific era of "domination". What is important is that there should be a chasm between the said player in discussion for the bonjwa title, and the second in running for it. Since people kept confusing the title of bonjwa as some kind of validation of a player's overall greatness (understandable since the four bonjwas at the time also used to be the overall greatest players), and not as an appreciation of a level of domination (and I stress the word again, domination, not titles won).
It's an important distinction to make here. Jaedong could have achieved what the other bonjwas did in the same time period, or even surpassed it. However, like I said before. It's not about finishing a certain check list. It's about being head and shoulders above the rest, and yes it is unfair to a degree if your peers are also superlative in nature, but that is how the terminology was created.
So with that established, let me break down why Jaedong wasn't a bonjwa, despite being a greater player than the likes of iloveoov and sAviOr, as an overall player. It has much more to do with performances in individual leagues and the ProLeague, but I'll keep the focus on these platforms since they are used for Thorin's arguments in the above mentioned video.
Jaedong's time frame of excellence (Batoo OGN StarLeague ~ NATE MSL)
There were six individual leagues available for competition at the time, and one ProLeague season. If we are to award my criteria for assessing overall achievements over that specific time period (16 points for 1st place, 8 points for 2nd place, and so on and so forth until we give 1 point for a round of 16 appearance), the points would be as follows, with the player with the closest performance listed below:
Jaedong: 54 points (most amount of points out of anyone)
Flash: 28 points (approximately 52% of Jaedong's points)
Within that time frame (the first game of Batoo OGN StarLeague to the final of NATE MSL), Jaedong has the following record in the ProLeague, compared with the next best two listed below, notice how Flash is challenging him for the best in the ProLeague also:
Jaedong: 69 wins 27 losses
Bisu: 67 wins 21 losses (approximately 97% of Jaedong's total wins)
Flash: 66 wins 24 losses (approximately 96% of Jaedong's total wins)
Compare with sAviOr. I'll use a similar time frame of six individual leagues running at the time for consistencies sake, instead of including his first MSL trophy which would increase both the time frame and the number of individual leagues examined. So the time frame is as follows (Pringles MSL S1 ~ GomTV MSL S1):
sAviOr: 56 points
NaDa: 25 points (approximately 45% of sAviOr's points)
sAviOr's ProLeague performances in that same time frame is as follows, with those above him in number of wins listed above him, Thorin's kind of underestimates how sAviOr was pretty stellar in ProLeagues during his prime:
Jaedong: 17 wins 6 losses (approximately 106% of sAvior's total wins)
sAviOr: 16 wins 4 losses
Sea: 15 wins 6 losses (approximately 94% of sAvior's total wins)
GGPlay: 14 wins 4 losses (approximately 89% of sAvior's total wins)
I'm not going to select other bonjwas since the ProLeague was either non existent or had competing team leagues going on at the time, and the status of individual leagues (especially for BoxeR) were wildly different to the more recent era. However, I'll be incredibly surprised if the difference between the bonjwas and the second best players of that era had less of a difference than the one Jaedong had.
As you can see sAviOr was clearly more dominant than Jaedong in individual leagues both in absolute terms, and comparatively to his peers, while Jaedong was a little more dominant in the ProLeague. In terms of achievements, what Jaedong has achieved may not be that much different from what sAviOr achieved, however, the fact that Flash was still a significant threat who was challenging him in both the individual leagues and the ProLeague for the title of the best makes all the difference.
sAviOr may have had brushes with NaDa in individual leagues, and had to compete with Jaedong for the title of the best ProLeague player (it's also worth noting that the ProLeague was only run 3 days a week, instead of 5 days a week like in the modern era, so the importance it had was less significant, again, the realities of the difference time frames must be considered), but overall there was no one player challenging him. It was different for Jaedong, who had Flash who wasn't far enough behind him for Jaedong to be labelled as a bonjwa. This is why bonjwa is a subjective term, and should not be the ultimate title a player can gain.
Now that we have (hopefully), got that major point out of the way (Jaedong and other great players being included as a bonjwa for how fantastic they were without considering the implications of the word bonjwa), here are some random segments that irked me.
1) Flash has achieved the most out of the five bonjwas. No. That title belongs to NaDa.
http://www.pgrer.net/pb/pb.php?id=free2&no=44007&category=1&sn1=on&divpage=6&sn=on&keyword=信主&select_arrange=hit
This was a career chart made by a PGR21 user before the last two OGN StarLeagues happened (similar to my point system, the author designates points designated 640 points for 1st place, 320 points for 2nd place, and the points are continued to be halved until we reach 40 points for a round of 16 appearance). Just look at the difference between NaDa (who has 6272 points) and Flash (who would go on to achieve 4920 points with his final two OGN leagues). And for those arguing about ProLeague and WCG titles that Flash had, NaDa had iTV, ghemTV, and KT-KTF Premiere League titles, and some of these leagues had a bigger prize pool than OGN StarLeagues running at the time, and the definition of the "two major individual leagues" was definitely not as clear as it was in the modern era. In fact, the phrase of the "big three individual leagues" was more common in NaDa's peak, which was why he was awarded the title of the Grand Slam winner when he won all the three major leagues in 2003. You can argue that Flash was more dominant, or that he would have gone on to achieve more than NaDa had the Brood War scene not ended prematurely, but you simply cannot say that Flash has "achieved more", this is a fallacy.
2) Some unmentioned factors when judging BoxeR and NaDa with a modern eye. BoxeR's absolute peak was in 2001, when KPGA Tours didn't even exist. NaDa's era was when KPGA Tours and OGN StarLeague had conflicting schedules during the earliest stages such as the qualification stages, so he had to forfeit games, when it was clearly possible for him to beat the OGN players that later went on to win those OGN titles he couldn't participate in due to being a relatively new player who wasn't seeded into the latter stages of both KPGA Tours and OGN StarLeagues where the schedules wouldn't overlap during the latter rounds. You simply cannot judge these players with a modern eye without knowing the circumstances of the era. Thorin's interest for Brood War came at a time when the various individual leagues had died out, the two individual leagues, the five day ProLeague season, and the off-season WCGs and the odd unofficial tournaments like GomTV leagues were going around. This is a terrible method to judge the past players on. There's so much more depth to these players, and it's a disservice to BoxeR to claim that he is somehow a lesser player due to the lack of modern era individual leagues during the era of his absolute prime. He had three individuals available for application that "count" during his absolute peak, compared to the usual six we find in the modern era, who are we to say that he wouldn't have done better if MSL existed back then.
By the way. Jaedong is my second favourite player of all time, and consider him to be the best player we have seen after NaDa (both could have achieved more under different circumstances), and probably the third greatest player behind NaDa and Flash. So I don't think it really matters in the grand scheme of things whether he was a bonjwa or not. However, the terminology of bonjwa should be preserved. I don't want a whole bunch of bonjwas running around in different scenes just for the buzzword factor. It was a phrase that was popularized during sAviOr's absolute peak, and the essence of the word should not be polluted. It's not a fault on Jaedong that his peak somewhat overlapped with Flash's. But that doesn't change the fact that his career was different in terms of trajectory to sAviOr's. They both had magic that made their careers special, but it was in no way similar to one another.
