When a tournament reaches its late stage you either get some of the best matchups or you get great stories and rivalries.

When it comes to this side of the bracket we do have one particularly important story, which is the Zerg vs Zerg matchup between Soma and Jaedong. Soma gets a first time shot to face off against his idol in an offline series. Does Jaedong have it in him to show why the matchup used to be called JvZ when he was involved?

We on the coverage team made a joke when this match was drawn about how this was a coughing baby vs hydrogen bomb situation between Leta and Soulkey respectively but underestimating Leta has been costing us a lot over 2026 as he continues to outperform his peers in the offline stage. Soulkey claims to have lost all motivation since his 4th ASL victory and is just coasting along, will that be the mental hole that Leta manages to crawl through or is even a less than motivated Soulkey still a hydrogen bomb?

Liquipedia

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Day 3 of the quarterfinals gives us a ZvZ between Soma and Jaedong. One side has the original Tyrant and the other is the defending ASL champion, Soma, who earned the nickname “JjapJaedong”, which means roughly “Fake Jaedong”, because his aggressive Zerg play reminded fans of Jaedong. It started as a joke, but after back to back ASL titles, Soma has made it a much less insulting comparison.

Let’s pause the preview for a second to take a peek back into Kespa era history. Jaedong’s first Bo3 against another Zerg was a 2-1 win over Savior in 2006. Savior was the established Zerg king at that time, and Jaedong was the teenage challenger. Jaedong later put together a 12-game ZvZ win streak and pushed his win rate in the match up to 81%. 20 fantastic years later, now we have Jaedong as the king of Z in one last battle to hold on to his ZvZ crown. Should he lose here, he will be forced to pass it down.

Soma was the only player in Group A who did not have to survive a second life. He opened with a win over Shuttle and then drew BeSt in the winners’ match. The first game went Soma’s way, BeSt answered in game two, and then Soma closed the series in the third game to take first place in the group. Nothing about it was easy, but that is about as clean as a Round of 16 run gets.

Jaedong had the opposite path. He started with a loss to Queen and got shoved straight into the elimination match against ggaemo. That could have been the end of the run, but Jaedong took the series 2-0 and earned the rematch with Queen. This time he was the one in control, winning another 2-0 and sending himself to a second straight ASL quarterfinal.

The biggest problem with previewing this matchup is that the head to head section is completely empty. In the supplied ASL/KSL data, these two have never played each other. We have had 22 seasons of ASL, two Soma championships, several Jaedong runs, and somehow the bracket has kept them apart until now.

That means we have to fall back on ZvZ history. Soma has a 6-4 ASL/KSL series record against Zerg, good for a 60% win rate. That includes his only ZvZ Bo5, a 3-0 destruction of hero in the ASL 21 quarterfinals. Jaedong has played twice as many ZvZ series, but the numbers have been less kind: 9-11 overall. His only ZvZ Bo5 came in ASL 15, where hero swept him 3-0.

This is the champion against the legend. Soma has the better recent form and the better ZvZ playoff record. Jaedong only has his Kespa JvZ legacy. ZvZ is now his kryptonite, and it feels likely he will fall one more time to this matchup. Soma should be confident going into this match and is probably already preparing for his games against Leta/Soulkey.

Soma Wins 3-1 And Advances To The Ro4!

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Ok, Leta isn’t exactly coughing baby tier, but this matchup certainly feels like a baby vs nuke scenario. That being said, we’ve all called Leta’s last run a fluke and yet he emerged first out of his Ro16 group once again, so maybe the Orange Caramel Terran will find another upset over the hungry Soulkey.

Leta - Tricky as always, Leta bested ggaemo and Queen with a mixture of cheese and his patented 2 port wraith. The one game he tried to play like FlaSh and go 13cc mech, he lost to Queen in pretty disappointing fashion. Much is to be desired about his TvZ style which seems to really rely on emerging from the openings with some sort of advantage or catching his opponent off guard. Against lower Zerg opponents who might not have the best responses, it can work. But we know Soulkey has some of the best knowledge in the game, and he will be extremely prepared for the trickery that Leta can throw at him. Mech didn’t feel convincing, straight up bio play definitely won’t be something I expect Leta to beat Soulkey with. That only leaves 2 port wraith and 111 openers, the latter which doesn’t feel like it would phase Soulkey. While his 1-17 beating from Soma appeared to help him advance from his TvZ group, I’m just not sure it’ll be enough to muscle past Soulkey.

Soulkey - Soulkey has been an absolute ZvT monster since his form has picked back up this ASL. His style of play has shifted from a methodical 2.5h muta/ling style into an muta all-in style that feels completely oppressive to play against. He’s played 4 ZvTs this ASL so far with a clean 4-0 record. Against PianO (the one game where it went to a standard late-game), it was a simple and smooth game. Meanwhile, all three games against JyJ were muta all-ins with the lone game on Attitude leading to a 2 base lurker/defiler crawl. While the games and his style has felt a bit cheap sometimes, it’s clear that Soulkey’s muta micro is near perfect right now. He finds every small moment to get a swipe off, and has started leading the trend of diving deep into the Terran base past the natural turrets. He also might be the only Zerg who’s finding these Chinese Triangle micro moments as well, whereas everyone else sticks to move-attack for the most part. All that being said, Soulkey has been going up against standard bio play in all of his games, whereas Leta is probably anything but standard. With the expectation that Leta will open 2 port wraith and all kinds of 111 variants, Soulkey will have to be on his toes dealing with Leta’s chaotic style.

Series Outlook - Backroom is the first map and we saw Leta BBS Queen and it somehow ended up working. I doubt Leta would try something like this on map 1 against Soulkey. The map can be decent for air play with how the natural mineral line is laid out, so I just expect 2 port wraith on this map from Leta. The rest of the pool will be interesting though. I could definitely see Leta try something like 3 port wraith on Odyssey, or fast drop play on Aiolos like he tried against ggaemo (even though the drop got stuffed). Colorless Fate could see some interesting aggro as well to try to push Soulkey off his game. Smooth but solid will be the main strategy for Soulkey, as Leta’s late game certainly won’t matchup against Soulkey’s in a neutral game.

Soulkey Wins 3-1 And Advances To The Ro4!

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Writers: FlashFTW, BisuDagger
Graphics: v1
Editors: BLinD-RawR