EPT
Disappointment has been the recurring theme for Bomber ever since his famous choke against Byun more than two years ago. Although MLG Raleigh briefly displayed what Bomber could look like when he's on a roll, there was no follow-up to the terrifying display put up on his first journey overseas, and He settled for relative mediocrity for most of 2012. Overshadowed first by the monstrous Protoss duo of Squirtle and Parting and later on by Life. When Mvp was reaching GSL finals in spite of his injuries, Bomber – the player who had beaten Mvp, in a finals at that, when the GSL champion was considered nigh-unbeatable – was struggling to maintain his Code S status and could find no new niche, nothing to set him apart besides old history.
Somewhere along the line, the fans decided that a player of Bomber's skill surely couldn't fail to win tournaments for so long without an external factor, an excuse for his lackluster performances, the reasons behind him never fully living up to expectations. He was named a chronic choker, and has spent the better part of his last two years living with that reputation, even fully accepting his reputation and joking about it on Twitter. Perhaps Bomber's disappointments were what allowed us to relate to him in a world otherwise ruled by the seemingly invulnerable Mvp and the blazingly quick MMA, when all Bomber had to set him apart was his incredible macro. But over time, Bomber has grown past his choking tendencies, though remnants of that reputation still linger.
At first glance, that's very logical – after all, whenever Bomber played well or performed up to expectations, he followed it up by disappointing the fans. He managed this in a million ways. Manner MULEs backfired more than once and questionable decisions cost him games he should have won more times than we can count. At first glance, all of this seems to further prove that Bomber, invariably, will disappoint both himself and the fans.
Unfortunately for the people who love to attribute everything to laws, curses and Kongs, there is no longer any basis for saying such a thing about Bomber. Think of the premise: Bomber will always disappoint his fans and if he doesn't, he will later. What should strike you about Bomber's supposed tendency to choke is that it can be applied to anyone by just switching ”Bomber” for someone else's ID. Everyone will eventually disappoint. Everyone will choke at one point if they play the game at a professional level for more than a couple of weeks. It's a fact of life. Innovation seemed unbeatable, but still lost to Soulkey. Flash went up 2-0 against Effort but was reverse-swept despite being almost universally recognised as the best the Brood War scene had to offer. Indeed, even Bomber's own team mates – Squirtle, Parting, Life, July – they've all lost important matches at some point, and they've all done it in questionable fashion.
If you look at all the players that attended Blizzcon - the year's best and most consistent players, you'll find that everyone has. But at one time or another, as a player, you're bound to have a bad day. You'll play a match and lose when you shouldn't have. It's unavoidable.
So, then, perhaps his reputation is less about results and more on the manner of which Bomber loses games? That would make a lot more sense, since Bomber's affinity for manner MULEs is rivalled only by Taeja's, and his extravagant show-offing in-game makes him more prone to awkward defeats than most other players. But the problem with such an idea is that, even if Bomber sometimes does lose games in disappointing fashion, he more than makes up for it by performing better than the vast majority of players. This year alone, he's placed top 4 in WCS Korea, top 4 at Blizzcon, he won a WCS championship, utterly stomping Jaedong and making the Tyrant look like a giant choker himself, and would probably have won Blizzcon as well if sOs hadn't suddenly learned to play PvT somewhere along the way. Even his match against the Blizzcon champion ended with whispers of choking and all manner of laws and theories. And certainly, Bomber made some decisions that didn't put him in a great position. But if we are to write some sort of law of disappointment to every player who makes a questionable decision in an important game at one time or another, we'd run out of paper to write on very quickly.
His results speak for themselves – Bomber is a top-tier Terran, consistently among the three best for most of the year. One can say whatever one wants about his tendency to sometimes lose when you'd think he shouldn't, but the same can be said about any player, champion or not. For all of this year, Bomber has been making progress. He has ironed out the more obvious flaws in his play, and although his stellar TvP win rate has suffered some what since the release of HotS, he has come a lot closer to becoming a complete player. He sports the best (at the very least most frequent) SCV pulls in the business, has beaten every single Terran with a claim to the #1 spot and has recently beaten two of the absolute top Zergs - Soulkey and Jaedong (one of whom he looks to beat again), convincingly. Add to that his championships and top placings and his bad games, his supposedly crushing defeats, suddenly seem very insignificant in comparison.
If you're an outspoken fan of Bomber, some people might tell you that he will never win another championship. That he's too streaky or inconsistent and that he'll choke on his mouse before winning another championship, that WCS Season 2 was the product of Jaedong's own manner curse - the Kong Line. But by now, every fan of Bomber and every person that subscribes to the Logic Magazine knows that there is no curse we can attribute Bomber's losses to. His losses are his own, not the product of some stage fright that activates when everything is on the line. He no longer gets the luxury of that excuse. The same goes for every other player at Hot6ix Cup. No one is without silvers or missed oppurtunities. No fan can tell you ”Hey, at least my player didn't choke” and no fan can claim that their player has been unquestionably more solid throughout the year. Dear might have his dual WCS championships, but Bomber has a championship of his own to go with more high placings. Soulkey might have neverending consistency, but Bomber has a higher peak level, a Bomberman-mode that makes him nigh-unbeatable.
At 2013's final tournament, Bomber seeks redemption after disappointing losses to Scarlett and a missed oppurtunity at the biggest tournament of all time, while Bomber's fans seek to defeat those who stubbornly bring up year-old results to prove some abstract theory about obligatory choking and disappointment. Bomber has grown beyond that, surpassing all of the Terrans that outshone him in 2011 and 2012. Should Bomber emerge as the champion of Hot6ix Cup, he'll have a legitimate claim to the Terran throne. A chance to build a new legacy, from the ashes of his old self.
*Written before RBBG, for RBBG, but surprisingly applicable here as well
