With this series, I intend to select a specific tournament that highlights the unique tendencies of professional Brood War players of the past. The first player to be selected is TheROCK[3.33], the protoss player who was known for his quirky personality, strategic prowess, and oddly enough, his uncanny ability to qualify for the OGN StarLeagues.

How uncanny can it be? First of all, let's check out which protoss players qualified for the OGN StarLeague (round of 16) most frequently:

1. Stork: 17 times
2. Reach: 12 times
3. TheROCK[3.33]: 9 times
3. Bisu: 9 times

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JangBi, managed to make his mark in history with only three OGN StarLeague appaearances

That's right, the only players who have graced the OGN StarLeagues more often than TheROCK[3.33] was Stork, and Reach. There were eight protoss OGN StarLeague champions in history (Grrrr..., GARIMTO, Reach, Kingdom, Nal_rA, Anytime, Stork, and JangBi), but few were as successful at getting back into the following StarLeagues as TheROCK[3.33] was.

Everyone agreed that this was a peculiar ability for a player who never managed to qualify for the MSL (not even the round of 32 even once). TheROCK[3.33] was freakishly competent in the Dual Tournaments/OGN StarLeague Round of 36 Stages, and for this trait, he was named "Hades" (for he was the lord of the Ongamenet underworld), and the "Poor Man's Version of Stork" by the Korean fan base.

Of course, this was also poking fun at the fact that he would drop out of all these OGN StarLeagues he qualified for as easily as he entered them.

The tournament I will discuss today is 2007 OGN Star Challenge Season 1, the tournament that decided the fourth seed for EVER 2007 OGN StarLeague. This was a format trait that OGN StarLeague used to have (Bacchus 2008 OGN StarLeague was the last OGN StarLeague to use this seeding system), where they only seeded the top three players, with the fourth seed being decided by having a mini-tournament between the fourth place player from the previous season of the OGN StarLeague, and players who progressed from the Dual Tournament just before the next OGN StarLeague started.

First TheROCK[3.33] easily dispatched Firebathero, who had just finished as the semi-finalist of GomTV MSL Season 2. After his victory, TheROCK[3.33] added salt to Firebathero's wounds with a memorable ceremony.

+ Show Spoiler +

He then won a hard fought match against Flash, the fourth placed player of Daum OGN StarLeague, with good reaver and carrier usage, as was the trend at the time.

Now the only player that stood in his way between the 4th seed for EVER 2007 OGN StarLeague was Jaedong. Jaedong was quoted as saying he was looking forward to playing TheROCK[3.33] more-so than Flash, due to his long standing legacy, while Flash was more of a rookie at the time.

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Jaedong, was quoted as saying he was excited to play his first ever best of five series

TheROCK[3.33] had dispatched two of the hottest terran rookies during his journey to the finals with good carrier usage, and was about to face the next superstar of the zerg race. As witnessed in the clip below, TheROCK[3.33] used a mixture of smart strategy and sound defense in order to overcome the zerg prodigy by a score of three to one. It would be the only best-of-five defeat Jaedong would suffer at the hands of a protoss player in his entire career, a feat that the likes of Bisu, Stork, and Kal tried and failed.

+ Show Spoiler +

TheROCK[3.33] in his element after defeating the much hyped zerg prodigy Jaedong

To complete the saga, TheROCK[3.33] entered EVER 2007 OGN StarLeague as the fourth seed, but was knocked out immediately with a 0-3 record. And in case you were wondering, yes, he made it back into the following OGN StarLeague.

Ty2

United States1434 Posts

July 06 2017 10:54 GMT

I've always thought of Rock as a weakling from his game July was iconic for as the overwhelming Sauron Zerg, but I've been taken aback. I appreciate anecdotal posts like these that really show the personality and story of a player, thanks a lot for sharing.

AnythingThenDelete

381 Posts

July 06 2017 12:29 GMT

Love those kind of blogs, thanks!

Letmelose

Korea (South)3227 Posts

July 06 2017 13:47 GMT

On July 06 2017 19:54 Ty2 wrote:
I've always thought of Rock as a weakling from his game July was iconic for as the overwhelming Sauron Zerg, but I've been taken aback. I appreciate anecdotal posts like these that really show the personality and story of a player, thanks a lot for sharing.

During TheROCK[3.33]'s reign as "Hades" within the realm of the underworld of Ongamenet, he was only a weakling once he entered the OGN StarLeague. In this specific context of tournaments held by Ongamenet, TheROCK[3.33] ruled the lower tier Ongamenet leagues with an iron fist.

TheROCK[3.33] qualified for 9 OGN StarLeagues starting from his first appearance in Gillette OGN StarLeague and his last in Incruit OGN StarLeague. That's a respectable 69% success rate at qualifying for the OGN StarLeague over a four year period. Now this might not sound that impressive, until you realize the following fact.

If we only consider this specific time frame (late-2004 to mid-2008), only one player qualified for more OGN StarLeagues (July with 11 appearances), and a single additional player who managed to equal TheROCK[3.33]'s record (Stork). Although it's a very peculiar record, there's no doubting that for a select few years, TheROCK[3.33] was almost unmatched in his ability to qualify for the OGN StarLeague, the most prestigious league in professional history.

This is someone who has a total of 18 ProLeague victories in his entire career, and never once qualified for MSL. Unless you were paying close attention to the lower leagues such as the Dual Tournaments or OGN Star Challenge leagues, you would be correct in assuming that he was a total weakling.

However in this one select ability to qualify for the OGN StarLeague, the man was one of the best protoss players in history.

GTR

51316 Posts

July 07 2017 04:49 GMT

On the other hand, we have Canata who is jokingly referred to as the 'Emperor of Survivor' who from 2006 to 2009 qualified for everyone MSL bar one.

I'm quite bemused by how Canata's career panned out. He wasn't a complete bust, but I think his high expectations from the fans due the hype he had during his amateur days probably played a role in him not bringing out his full potential. Perhaps being on SKT and having players like oov and Fantasy to bounce ideas from saved his career from busting out.

Letmelose

Korea (South)3227 Posts

July 07 2017 07:40 GMT

On July 07 2017 13:49 GTR wrote:
On the other hand, we have Canata who is jokingly referred to as the 'Emperor of Survivor' who from 2006 to 2009 qualified for everyone MSL bar one.

I'm quite bemused by how Canata's career panned out. He wasn't a complete bust, but I think his high expectations from the fans due the hype he had during his amateur days probably played a role in him not bringing out his full potential. Perhaps being on SKT and having players like oov and Fantasy to bounce ideas from saved his career from busting out.

We had quite a lot of players who had "uneven" performances, as in, doing only well in OGN StarLeague compared to the MSL, or vica verca. I believe TheROCK[3.33]'s career was a little more surprising in nature than the career of Canata, who actually did manage to reach the round of eight in Bacchus 2009 OGN StarLeauge.

Canata was indeed known as the "Emperor of the Survivor Tournament", mostly due to his record of 17 win streak there, but even that was bested by Sea who had a mighty 18 game win streak of his own. Canata did have an impressive streak of qualifying for all nine MSL tournaments from GomTV MSL Season 1 to NATE MSL, an accomplishment that was only achieved by the likes of Bisu, sAviOr, and Hwasin during that specific period. Probably a blog worthy career quirk in itself, although now I've discussed it so much, I'll probably do other players instead.

I think it's quite tragic how Canata never grew out of his "super rookie" phase, with everyone insisting on how much skill and potential he had, until one day he was too old for all that nonsense, and we slowly came to the realization that his time to shine had passed him by many years ago.

I've heard stories about how he would be the best in-house player in terms of absolute skill in a team that had the likes of iloveoov, and Midas still in their primes, how he would defeat sAviOr during practice back when he was in godmode, and how he would dominate the ladders with ease. His actual results would always be lackluster, and his rumours of his loftly prowess would slowly degenerate from "monstrous terran rookie that destroys everyone during practice" to "still a top player during in-house SK Telecom T1 games" to "still quite good during practice".

I personally feel he has let down the expectations set by the masses as one of the next hopes for not only SK Telecom T1 as a team, but the terran race as a whole. The terran race had no one to rally to after the old terran gods such as NaDa and illoveoov fell from grace, and Flash had yet to become the monster he would become later on.

Canata was being hyped since 2004, when he won that NewComers' League, but failed to live up to the heavy burden of the great terran lineage, and stood as a bystander as the entire terran race bent their knees to sAviOr, a player who was on the same "hyped rookie" boat with Canata only a couple of years ago.

More importantly, he bore witness to the degeneration of the most powerful team in ProLeague history, the Triple Crown winning SK Telecom T1 of 2005, becoming a 10th place team in the ProLeague, two years down the road in 2007. It wasn't Canata that saved the sinking ship of SK Telecom T1, it was the discovery of two rookie players in BeSt, and FanTaSy, and the signing of Bisu, the superstar protoss player from MBC Game Heroes.

Canata seemed to be destined for greatness. He was the chosen heir of BoxeR, the "Emperor of Terran", he was the super rookie the strongest team in history had vouched would become their next ace card. He certainly didn't fizzle out, but I'm not sure if he ever was sparked into life in the first place.