EPTby Waxangel
Of the sixteen players at Blizzcon,
Woongjin_Soulkey's tale is uniquely tragic. When a player wins a championship, he usually gets some some time to enjoy it. A respite to enjoy the title of "best in the world," and look down on the rest of the competition thinking 'I own all of you.' But in the case of Soulkey, his one miraculous run, his one prayer answered by heaven was spent on a moment that was overlooked within a week.
Soulkey's title win came right at the height of the age of
INnoVation, as the robot Terran was hitting 70%+ win rates in each match-up (that's bonjwa class) and appearing to be on a different level from every other player in HotS. As he booked a June 1st finals date against INnoVation in Code S/WCS Korea, Soulkey seemed destined to fill the part of Yellow to Boxer or MarineKing to Mvp. He was the strong, credible opponent who was worthy of the finals, prepared for sacrifice in a bloody ritual to annoint the new Terran savior. For three games Soulkey followed the script, playing at a high level but still getting dismantled by INnoVation's flawless play. But with INnoVation just one game away from winning the championship, Soulkey started fighting back from a position where no one had ever won before. Two successive roach bane all-ins brought him back to 2 – 3, and a failed cheese from INnoVation tied the series at 3 – 3. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, Soulkey had come back from certain death and had made the finals a best of one.
Twice before in the GSL a player had recovered from an 0 – 3 deficit, and he had failed to complete the comeback. Squirtle played the games of his life against Mvp, only to choke against cheese in the final minutes of the final map. DongRaeGu earned himself a game seven against MMA, played his heart out in one of the greatest games of WoL, but ultimately fell short at the conclusion.
Soulkey? With all the pressure in the world on his shoulders, he kept his calm and became the first player to make the machine feel, and what INnoVation felt was panic. In a move that defied all reason and logic, INnoVation scanned Soulkey's mutalisks and proceeded to fly three loaded medivacs right into their path. Soulkey seized the opportunity and squeezed the final GG out of INnoVation.
What a story. Soulkey, the man who fought his destiny to be a sacrificial lamb. The man who interrupted the tale that was being written for months, interjecting himself as the new protagonist while reducing the proceeding chapters to a prologue. Soulkey, the best player in the world!
That's how it felt in that dramatic moment as Soulkey lifted the trophy in front of his tearful family members, but alas, it didn't take long for everyone to settle back down into reality. Here's some excerpts from our June Power Rank that came out just four days after the finals.
Let's start with the beginning of this month, the group of death... ...Innovation took this all in stride and proceeded to win the group, producing two of the most high-level and impressive games we'd see this month. He then went on to face both the winner and runner-up of the last GSL, dispatching both rather effortlessly. In Proleague, Innovation also ended round 5 with a 11-3 record including two all-kills...
...It seems quite harsh that all of this would be negated by the difference of just one game, even if that's the biggest one game there can ever be (that same one game that once separated Mvp and Squirtle; look at where they are now). Taking the whole month into perspective, Innovation was just the more impressive player over Soulkey, both in terms of results and the vigor of their play.... ...in the end, it was not his skill that failed him, but his composure, composure that slowly corroded over the course of those final four games and finally gave out when his three medivacs flew into the welcoming arms of Soulkey's idle mutalisks...
...Think of it this way: you have to bet your life on either Soulkey or Innovation in a bo1 against an arbitrary player. Who would you choose?
...It seems quite harsh that all of this would be negated by the difference of just one game, even if that's the biggest one game there can ever be (that same one game that once separated Mvp and Squirtle; look at where they are now). Taking the whole month into perspective, Innovation was just the more impressive player over Soulkey, both in terms of results and the vigor of their play.... ...in the end, it was not his skill that failed him, but his composure, composure that slowly corroded over the course of those final four games and finally gave out when his three medivacs flew into the welcoming arms of Soulkey's idle mutalisks...
...Think of it this way: you have to bet your life on either Soulkey or Innovation in a bo1 against an arbitrary player. Who would you choose?
For the vast majority of us, the answer to that last question was INnoVation. The more you looked at the context, at every other result outside that single best of seven final, it became clear that Soulkey wasn't the new hero the narrative would shift to follow – he was just the star of a spectacular but short highlight reel.
Just a week after Soulkey's dramatic triumph in the Code S finals, the WCS Season 1 Finals were held. Soulkey lost to his teammate sOs in the semi-finals, who went on to be crushed by INnoVation in the grand finals. Soulkey's championship had been but a brief episode during the age of INnoVation.
******
Respected, feared, and highly successful—but never the best. That has been Soulkey's identity in Heart of the Swarm. He has been the #1 Zerg and a top three player for all of HotS, and enters Blizzcon as the #1 seed from the unforgiving WCS Korea region without any point padding from international tournaments. Yet he is still overlooked, always outshone by another player's rising star.
The hellbat-nerf saw INnoVation fall from his perch and open up an opportunity, but INnoVation made sure to grab onto Soulkey's ankle as he hurtled downward, eliminating the Woongjin Zerg from the Auction OSL. In the final WCS Korea of the year, Soulkey was toppled by SKT's soO, whose will to redeem the name of all SKT Zergs proved to be stronger than Soulkey's desire to redeem himself. Soulkey was able to take a degree of vengeance by helping train Dear to defeat soO in the finals, but it came back to bite him as he would face Dear at the WCS Season 3 Finals in Canada. Soulkey fell 0 - 4 to the very player whom he had helped practice.
It's hard to feel sympathy for a player who is one of the favorites to win an entire tournament, and it's going to be harder still when you see him stepping on the dreams of one those courageous underdogs. But the players close to the summit have their own unique struggle, because the gap between first and second is just as far as the gap between second and last. Soulkey won a championship, only to discover that the championship itself is but a means to an end. More than the money, more than the trophy, the most important thing for Soulkey at Blizzcon is earning the only title that matters: Best in the world.
1: Soulkey - The Tragic Champion
2: INnoVation - The Man in the Machine
3: Jaedong - In Search of Lost Time
4: Polt - Prince of the Tides
5: HerO - Fire and Ice
6: Dear - The Unending Royal Road
7: Maru - The Prince Who Would be King
8: Bomber - I Fought the Law (And I Won)
9: MMA - Out of Exile
10: MC - Cash Rules Everything Around Me
11: TaeJa - Fire and Ice
12: sOs - On the Cutting Edge
13: aLive - The Iconoclast
14: Mvp - The King
15: duckdeok - Faceless
16: NaNiwa
