#9 | INnoVation, Man Inside the Machine

Tier 1:
2012 GSL Season 3: Top 4
MLG Winter Championship 2013: 3rd
GSL 2013 Season 1: 2nd
GSL Season 1 Finals 2013: 1st
OSL 2013: Top 4
DH Bucharest 2013: 2nd - Only missing Soulkey and a few top protoss
DH Winter 2013: Top 4
GSL 2014 Season 3: 1st

Tier 2:
ASUS Northcon: Top 4
DH Bucharest 2014: Top 4

Greatest Series Played:
INnoVation vs Taeja - WCS Season 2 Finals
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

INnoVation vs Flash - MLG Winter Championship 2013
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

INnoVation vs Supernova - GSTL Finals 2013
      Final Set

INnoVation vs Curious - IEM NY Qualifiers
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

INnoVation vs Soulkey - Proleague 2013 Whirlwind
      Set 2

INnoVation vs Soulkey - IEM Katowice Qualifiers
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

INnoVation vs Life - IEM WC 2015
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5

INnoVation vs DRG - Code S 2013 Season 3 Ro32 Group F
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

The Korean KeSPA Terran (that is, KeSPA Terran that transferred over from BW) are all of very much a similar mold. They have high mechanics, are very aggressive, like to pull SCVs against protoss, are constantly on the attack and have trouble making in game strategic decisions. Instead they follow a flow chart of pre-automated commands to play the game out optimally in efficient fashion. Of course there are exceptions: Reality and Bbyong are remarkable in how they've deviated, while TY is a semi-exception. TY's play style is unique, but he harbors a lot of the same weak in game strategic decisions of the KeSPA Terran and follows a flow chart. Among all of KeSPA Terrans, INnoVation is the best. He is the prototype. He is the one that they aspire to be. He is a machine.

And yet looking at the way he plays and the decisions he’s made, there is a startling parallel between him and MarineKing. Both are extremely talented mechanical players. Both have made a massive impact on how their race is played. Both were players aiming to become the best in the world. Both were out-thought in their first ever GSL Finals. The difference was that MarineKing cried after his loss. INnoVation sniffed some flowers and stood awkwardly as Soulkey was given the trophy. Perhaps that is why it is so easy to write off INnoVation as a machine, an android, a cyborg. His play is clean and he is an efficient death dealing machine. His interviews are monotone, his answers utterly plain.

But if you look at his actions alone, it speaks to a very real human heart under that metal skin. He left KeSPA because he believed he could still be the best terran in Korea and become something of a Taeja-like player in the international scene. His expedition outwards had some moderate success, but nowhere near what he had hoped for. At the same time his results in Korea flagged (mostly because of the Blink Era) and INnoVation was forced to make a choice: he could either keep his freedom or return home and try to once more become the best player under KeSPA's regime.

Riding the wave of that switch, INnoVation swept his first GSL victory (though most of that run was done under Acer). It looked like INnoVation's revival was complete and going into 2015, he appeared to be the great threat to the regime of Zest. And then Life happened. Life went on a killing spree that he hadn't done since his 2012 run as he mauled his way through the greatest players on earth and it was in that moment that the two of them realized the exact same thing. The other player was in the way.

For the first time in his life INnoVation gave an interesting interview as he called Life a player that lacked fundamentals and predicted his easy victory. Life defeated him 3-2. Life called INnoVation the player that lacked fundamentals and in their fight at IEM it was Innovation who won a hard fought 3-2 series. For all his monotony and his utterly stoic face, INnoVation has made it clear that becoming the best in the world is now all that matters to him. And that Life is an eyesore and he will stop at nothing to defeat him.

Play Style:



For all the comparisons I made with INnoVation and MarineKing, INnoVation has a few things that have made him a stronger player overall. First is his methodical view in how he solves SC2 problems. Take his debut in 2012 WoL. More specifically he focused solely on his own build, refining it and his own mechanics to the point that he was literally winning games against zergs and protosses by left click moving his armies into the enemy, putting them on stop command and winning the fights on sheer number advantage alone. After he had come up with the most refined builds, he started learning how to micro his units while churning out an endless stream of units. He then came to the realization that if he could put enough pressure and harassment and attack on the opponent that he could take the strategical aspects of SC2 out of the equation and try to force the game into a battle of mechanics, a battle in which he was the superior.

It is that methodical strategic outlook focused on efficiency which has made him the model in which KeSPA teams have tried to mold their terrans into. After all, strategy, tactics, in-game decision making, game sense, those are all things that are extremely hard to develop no matter how many hours you put in. But if you follow the INnoVation model, you are bound to get get results at some point down the line once you master his style of standard play.Yet at the same time this came with a heavy price.

What happens when a player can play close to your level and you cannot smother him with mechanics alone? In those few cases, INnoVation has often lost such as in his series against Flash, Taeja, and Curious. Other problems he has is his mental toughness. He has broken down multiple times in critical ace matches (most notably against Soulkey in his finals and Life in the Ro8 2015 GSL). And finally, though rarely, there may be a player who can even out-do him at his own game. His series against DRG is one such example, and when it happens, all INnoVation can do is hope for his opponent to make a mistake instead of proactively searching for new solutions.

Difference between INnoVation and Rain:

The differential between INnoVation and Rain was fairly straightforward. Both had a similar level of consistency across the years as SC2 players. Rain never slumped, but his peaks were lower than INnoVation's. In terms of top tier tournaments, INnoVation has had more results in those and his GSL victory, GSL second place and Season 1 Finals victory are much stronger accomplishments in than Rain’s. INnoVation even had the path in his 2013 GSL run of literally beating the top 5 of the top 6 other players in the world (though the 6th beat him in the finals).

#8 | Zest, Dream Shatterer

Tier 1:
GSL Season 1 2014 - 1st
GSL Global Championship 2014 - 1st
GSL Season 3 2014 - Top 4
IEM Toronto - 2nd
Kespa Cup - 1st
Hot6ix CUp - Top 4
IEM WC 2015 - 1st

Greatest Series Played:
Zest vs sOs - KeSPA Cup 2014 Quarter Finals
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5

Zest vs Parting - KeSPA Cup 2014 Finals
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5 | Set 6 | Set 7

Zest vs soO - Season 1 Finals
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5 | Set 6 | Set 7

Zest vs DRG - Shoutcraft Invitational Ro8
      Set 1 | Set 2

Zest vs Rain - GSL Season 3 2014 Quarter Finals
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

The very essence of competition is that no matter how strong you are, no matter how much you've done, slowly and inevitably someone will come up to take you out. In order to reach the top, in order to become the #1 player, in order to become the paragon, you must crush your opponents. Everyone has ambitions, everyone wants to be the best, but in SC2 only one can remain standing at the end to lift the trophy, only one will be celebrated as the Champion. In 2014 Zest was that Champion, Zest was the man who came in and shattered the dreams of nearly every other player he faced.

There were no warning signs. If you had asked anyone before 2014 who Zest was,the most information you could get out of the most die hard fan was “Oh that guy who changed his name from Wooki to P7GAB to Zest right?” Unlike other KeSPA protoss like Rain or herO or sOs or JangBi, there was nothing remarkable about him at all. When players like Rain were challenging for the OSL title, Zest was losing to Guemchi. Many think about Zest as this overnight success story, but that could not be further from the truth.

Zest spent 5 year in anonymity. 5 years drudging in practice as he saw players far more successful than him move on or retire or become Champions. 5 years of looking on as his peers passed him by. But in 2014, it was his turn to rise, his turn to take the dreams of others and smash them into dust. And he did it with a bang as he all-killed the star studded SKT and covered himself in the blood of his rival team. He then flowed with that momentum and won his GSL, denying soO 1st place once again.

That is the story of Zest and in a way the story of all Champions. To become the greatest player on earth, you must become a monster, someone who mercilessly destroys the hopes and aspirations of others to glorify yourself. In 2014, he spent the entire year killing SKT players and eliminating them again and again and again in Proleague and individual leagues. He spent just as much time denying soO chances to ever leave the Kong line. In an year where protoss had the largest depth of top tier players like herO, HerO (earlier in the year), Rain, Dear, sOs, Stats, Trap, and PartinG, Zest out did them all combined. Not since the end of 2011 Mvp have we seen such a dominant year from just one player.

Play Style:

In many ways Zest is extraordinarily similar to Rain. Rain remade PvP in his own image. Zest remade all of protoss play in his. Looking at Zest games, nothing he does seems particularly out of the ordinary and you’d be right. It is the small details, the slight variations of builds, the reactions and the decisions that have all been shaped by Zest. If Zest looks normal it is because he has shaped the way normal looks for protoss. In an era where the top 5 protoss players are all contenders to be Champions—players like Rain, sOs, herO and PartinG—it makes it all the more impressive to see that Zest has trumped them all.

Yet even Zest has weaknesses, weaknesses that have been exposed a few times. First his PvT is fairly weak, especially in the early game. This has more to do with his micro. Unlike the other top tier protoss players, Zest’s micro and control is generally much worse than theirs. The reason he does better is because of his superior game sense and his ability to avoid getting caught in bad situations. Yet if he can’t do it, if the terran can force him into a battle of micro, Zest often crumbles.

Another weakness is his stability. Zest very rarely plays a game where things go completely wild. When it does, his natural intelligence usually lets him eke out those wins. But against top tier players like herO and Taeja, that inexperience in wild situations, that small differential in decision making and reactive thinking, was exploited to leave Zest with little hope of recovering.

Difference between Zest and INnoVation

INnoVation by reputation was the best Korean terran in 2013, but had only ever lived up to that billing in the first half of the year. In the second half he had high results in LANs like DH Bucharest 2013, DH Winter 2013 and ASUS ROG, but could never get anywhere in Korea (or the season finals) after his loss to Maru. Zest on the other hand was undoubtedly #1 all year in 2014, winning three out of the six Korean LANs he entered. And even among the three he lost, his worst result was a Ro8. In both consistency and staying power at the top Zest is superior to INnoVation hands down. And then you take into account INnoVation's runs at the three LANs he had during 2013 in the latter half of the year:

DH Bucharest 2013: 2nd - loss to Crank, loss to Supernova, MMA, loss to Taeja
DH Winter 2013: Top 4 - loss to Taeja, sOs, ForGG, JYP, loss to Patience
Asus Northcon: Top 4 - loss to Life, San, loss to Jaedong

While I rank DH Bucharest 2013 and DH winner 2013 as tier 1 LANs (DH Winter was along the same lines of IPL5 and MLG Providence as being GSL level difficulty, DH Bucharest was only missing Soulkey and 2-3 more top tier protoss from reaching that level), INnoVation's runs there were unimpressive. His only significant win against MMA and he lost to Crank and SuperNova in the group stages and got upended by Taeja. At DH Winter 2013, he beat sOs and ForGG and a streaking JYP, but lost to Patience. At ASUS the only notable player he beat was San before losing to Jaedong. In terms of results and difficulty of competition, Zest’s 2014 was far stronger than INnoVation's 2013, even when you include INnoVation's GSL victory from 2014.

#7 | Nestea, The Smart Choice

Achievements:

Tier 1:
GSL Open 2 - 1st
GSL January 2011 - Top 4
GSL May 2011 - 1st
GSL July 2011 - 1st
Blizzcon 2011 - 2nd
IPL 4 - 3rd

Tier 2:
Iron Squid 1 - 3rd
Iron Squid 2 - 3rd

Greatest Series Played:
Nestea vs Choya - GSL Code S Jan 2011
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

Nestea vs sC - GSL May 2011 Semi Finals
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Sets 4 and 5 | Set 5 (English)

Nestea vs July - GSL July 2011 Code S
      Set 1

Nestea vs Anypro - GSL 2011 May Quarterfinals
      Set 1 (English) | Set 2 | Set 3

Nestea vs NaDa - GSL 2011 October Code S
      Set 1

Nestea vs TOP - GSL Super Tournament
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

Nestea vs Virus - Code S 2011 October
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

Nestea vs PartinG - Iron Squid 2
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5

Nestea vs aLive - Iron Squid 1 Semi Finals
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5

Nestea vs aLive - IPL 4 Semi Finals
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4

Nestea vs Squirtle - IPL 4
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5


The easy choice would have been to move on. Nearing the age of 30, Nestea was already 5 years past the usual time when Korean BW players had given up the mouse. Players who had done more, who had shown more potential than him, had long given up. They told him he was too old, too slow, and his time was up. The smart choice would have been to move on, to let go. No one would have blamed him; in fact no one would have noticed. The only one who would have blamed Nestea was Nestea. And that was all it took and Nestea, completely incapable of giving up his dream, would take on the challenge one last time and the world would be his witness.



Unknown and unheralded, Nestea took the plunge once more. In 1 week of play, Nestea qualified for GSL Open 1. 1 month later, he won GSL Open 2 above living legend Boxer and the fan-favorite MKP. And the reign of Nestea began. He wasn’t changing the way zerg was played in obvious ways; he took what was there and he played it better. His decision making and reactive style put Nestea a level above the rest as he used his intelligence to score victory after victory.

Game after game, play after play, Nestea electrified the world with his audacity, genius and willpower. Nestea stopped a void ray 4 gate with a spore, a ling and 2 queens. He killed 20 thors with a 100 banelings. He became the master of base trade ZvT by making come from behind victories with baneling mines. It took the world 7 months to find a zerg that could even take 1 game off of him. Even then he was merely the best zerg in the entire world. It wasn’t until his second GSL title run that he became the Creator of the Universe. His first victim was Anypro. Anypro, infamous for going forge first 100% of the time. Nestea shocked the world by attempting the world’s first spine crawler rush in a televised game and crushed Anypro’s soul.

He then followed it up with one of the best and most memorable series of all time against sCfOu. It was a sublime series, a perfect moment of SC2 that showed the real potential of what the game had to offer. Game 5 was the pinnacle of SC2 at the time as sC's manic parade pushes and constant harassment confronted Nestea's counter attacks and defensive banelings. Those baneling land mines allowed Nestea to take the game by the skin of his teeth, and the often times shy Korean audience erupted in chants of "Lim Jae Duk! Lim Jae Duk!" This game personified who Nestea was, a man holding on to the edge of a cliff, the forces of the world trying to pry his last fingers and force him to let go. He was a man who spent 10 years with nothing to show for his name, but he was too stubborn to quit, too ambitious to make the smart choice.



That is the man we call Nestea. Since then he has set multiple records: First Champion to win 3 GSLs, first to win 3 GSLS against 3 different races, first to win a GSL Finals after losing the first game, first to go 4-0 in a finals, first to get a perfect record in a GSL run, first to stay in GSL Code S 10 times in a row. In many ways it was fitting indeed that Nestea joined the team Incredible Miracle, because his entire career has been a miracle.

In many ways I can’t help but feel Nestea shaped the way his entire team looked at their lives. First was about to retire from pro gaming altogether before Nestea gave him a talk about his future. Losira and Yoda became practically irrelevant for a year before they found their way back up. I sometimes think the entire core IM team didn’t retire solely because they’d feel ashamed to retire in front of man who had held onto that dream for 10 years.

Play Style:

Nestea is the only player who can say he innovated his race the way Mvp did his. (The only zerg players close to his influence are Stephano, whose builds all get nerfed into the ground, and Life.) Everything we know as the basic fundamentals almost all come from him and the way he played and looked at the game. Like all great men of thought, Nestea was a better innovator in a time when his race was weakest. The closest analogy to the weakness of zerg is the Blink Era for terran. Not only did the other races have strong early aggressive options while zerg had to fight with a 3 range queen, but the maps were tiny. Most of the maps from the early days are a quarter or at best half the size of the current map pool. Nestea had to fend off 11/11 rushes in distances shorter than the main base on Alterzim. With 3 range queens.

Nestea was generally a macro zerg that liked to scout what his opponents were doing and react to what builds or unit comps they were going for. He was famous for his muta ling/bling and had incredible muta micro—though he did have the tendency to fall asleep on them. In terms of APM he was always on the lower side, but he made sure to inject his larvae (one of the few early zergs to understand just how important that was). He also popularized droning to the 80-90+ mark and then constantly recycling an infinite amount of lings and banelings to crush his opponents.

In ZvZ he was instrumental in finding every build opener, every permutation of build, how to react to each build, how to transition, the compositions you could use in the early mid and late game. He used roaches, roach bane, roach hydra infestor and muta ling bling. The only matchup he wasn’t as influential in was ZvP (Stephano’s builds and compositions are still very much in use today), but he trademarked the infinite spine forest into mass mutalisk base trades that have given protoss players nightmares since the beginning of time.

Beyond that he also created numerous one off builds including the creep spine crawler rush, proxy hatch against terran (to creep the third and deny it from going down forever), and the lair roach bane overlord creep spore rush (which he used once in a Chinese major tournament and was copied a week later by Leenock who thanked him for the build).

Difference between Zest and Nestea

In overall achievements, Nestea and Zest are fairly similar. Zest was the best protoss player for all of 2014. Nestea was the best zerg player from 2010 to late 2011. And he remained one of the best zerg players for the majority of 2012 and had never left the Top 5 spot. In terms of consistency, Nestea’s was longer. Other than that Nestea had 6 major runs in Tier 1 tournaments and 2 major runs in tier 2 tournaments. Zest had 7 major runs in 7 major tournaments. Here are the paths they took for clarification:

Nestea:

Tier 1:
GSL Open 2 - 1st - MC, Boxer, MKP
GSL January 2011 - Top 4 - Polt, Boxer, Choya, loss to Mvp (bad format)
GSL May 2011 - 1st - Jinro twice, Fruitdealer, Anypro, sC, Inca
GSL July 2011 - 1st - July, Losira
Blizzcon 2011 - Naniwa, Mvp, loss to Mvp
IPL 4 - 3rd - aLive, PartinG, Squirtle, Stephano, loss to aLive, loss to Squirtle

Tier 2:
Iron Squid 1 - 3rd - aLive, Leenock, jjakji, loss to Symbol, aLive
Iron Squid 2 - 3rd - Thorzain, PartinG, Scarlett, loss to DRG, MKP

Zest

Tier 1:
GSL Season 1 2014 - 1st - Trap, loss to Maru, Soulkey, Dear, sOs, Rain, soO
GSL Global Championship 2014 - 1st - Parting, MMA, soO, PartinG
GSL Season 3 2014 - Top 4 - loss to Rain, Soulkey, loss to Cure, Soulkey, Rain, loss to soO
IEM Toronto - 2nd - loss to Taeja, Bunny, Polt, Yoda, Life, loss to Flash
Kespa Cup - 1st - Pigbaby, sOs, Classic, herO
Hot6ix CUp - Top 4 - loss to Bbyong, PartinG, Soulkey, loss to MarineKing
IEM WC 2015 - 1st - Hydra, INnoVation, Bbyong, Trap

If you split it up, Nestea’s GSL Open 2 was similar to Zest’s KeSPA Cup. There Nestea beat the best protoss, a Top 5 terran, a Top 5 zerg and the best terran (Mvp had yet to enter the scene). In comparison Zest beat Pigbaby (a fairly hot protoss but only Top 10 at best), sOs, Classic and herO all in or close to the Top 5.

The next result were their Top 4 placings. There Nestea beat Polt, Boxer and Choya and lost to Mvp. Zest beat Soulkey twice and Rain once for his notable opponents. Fairly close though Zest’s list is still more competitive even after you include relative strengths of the scene.

After that is Nestea’s GSL May victory. There he beat a Top 5 terran twice, the 2nd best zerg, a Top 5 protoss, Top 3 terran and a Top 3 protoss. This is closest to Zest’s first GSL run where he beat a Top 10 P, a Top 5 Z, three more Top 5 protoss and the best zerg. In terms of relative strength, Nestea’s GSL was stronger but it’s balanced out by the stronger depth Zest had to wade through.

The next run was Nestea’s GSL July where he only beat two great players in July and Losira. This is comparable to Zest’s GSL Global Championship where he beat PartinG, MMA, soO and PartinG again. MMA was a non factor, but soO and PartinG were the best zerg and Top 5 P at the time. In terms of competitive edge, Zest wins out, but the larger player pool and the fact that Nestea didn’t drop a single map make it even.

Next we have to compare three tournaments at once. Nestea’s IPL 4, Iron Squid 1 and Iron Squid 2 against Zest’s IEM WC 2015, IEM Toronto and Hot6ix Top 4. Nestea’s IPL 4 was in a lot of ways more impressive than Zest’s IEM WC victory. The only godly player Zest had to beat in his run was INnoVation. The rest are upper class with Trap peaking close to Top 5 protoss. Nestea on the other hand beat a Top 3 terran, both top 2 protoss, the best foreigner (Top 5 Z) before losing to Top 3 terran and the best protoss. In pure competitive edge and format IPL 4 outweighs the IEM WC 2015, which is balanced a bit by Zest’s Hot6ix Cup run where he beat PartinG and Soulkey. However this leaves Nestea’s Iron Squid 1 and 2 runs where he played Top 5 terran, Top 5 zerg, Top 10 terran, Top 5 terran again, a Top 3 protoss, a top foreigner and a Top 10 terran in both those tournaments compared to Zest’s lone Toronto run where he beat a Top 3 terran, a top foreigner, a Top 10 terran, another Top 10 terran, and a top 5 zerg before losing to Flash. Even given the increase skill of today, Nestea’s double Iron Squid runs edge out Zest’s 2nd run at IEM Toronto.

Overall, looking at their paths, I ended up favoring Nestea slightly in terms of difficulty. He had played in more varied formats over a longer period of time. Yet you could still make the argument that in terms of raw skill today, Zest should be ahead. Yet there are two factors you have to include.

Adversity and Innovation. These factors are things I've mentioned before but have never had to bring up before this. But as we close towards the top, you need to nitpick every single factor for and against why the rankings land where they do. Put bluntly, Zest was dominant in an era where protoss was dominant. Of course this doesn't diminish his results as he ruled in an era with a large number of top tier protoss, but look at his tournament paths and how his runs have ended. More often than not he’s died to terrans. Because of how the meta worked, he nearly avoided that matchup for the entirety of his 2014 run.

Now look at Nestea. Zerg was at its weakest from 2010 all the way to the queen patch (which happened in mid 2012). While Zest has done great work for his race, in terms of innovation and refinement, Nestea very much built his race.

In the end it’s more than just the numbers, more than the stats, more than raw skill when talking about the greatest. It is about the impact the player has made on the game, the adversity they had to face.

#6 | MMA, "Get Off the Mat."

Achievements:
Tier 1:
GSL October 2011 - 1st
GSL Blizzard Cup - 1st - Nestea, Leenock, Naniwa, Polt, Mvp, DRG
WCS EU Season 2 2013 - Top 4 - loss to Naniwa, loss to MC
WCS EU Season 3 2013 - 1st - duckdeok, Vortix, MC
IEM Bucharest 2013 - Top 4 - Snute, Flash, YugiOh, ForGG, loss to INnoVation
WCS EU Season 1 2014 - 2nd - loss to Welmu, loss to VortiX, Bunny, Mvp, Snute, San, loss to MC
WCS EU Season 3 2014 - 1st - YoDa, loss to Golden, ForGG, San, YoDa
Blizzcon 2014 - 2nd - StarDust, Bomber, Classic, loss to Life
GSL Season 1 2015 - Top 4 - Dark, INnoVation, TY, loss to PartinG
IPL 4 - Top 4 - loss to MKP, Polt, Stephano, loss to Squirtle

Tier 2:
Iron Squid 1 - 1st - Jjakji, pre-champion Life, loss to MaNa, aLive, Symbol
MLG Anaheim - 2nd - loss to Rain, Naniwa, DRG, Ganzi, Boxer, loss to Mvp
IPL 3 - Top 4 - Puma, loss to Lucky

Tier 3:
MLG Columbus - 1st - July, Idra, Losira
IEM WC 2012 - 3rd - viOLet, loss to Puma

Tier 4:
IEM Keiv - 1st - Zenio, Dimaga
DH Moscow - 1st - loss to Jjakji, YoDa, Patience, Snute, Jjakji

Greatest Games played:
MMA vs DRG - GSTL Finals
      Set 9

MMA vs DRG - Blizzard Cup Finals
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5 | Set 6 | Set 7

MMA vs GuMiho - GSTL Finals
      Set 1

MMA vs Mvp - Code S Season 4 2012
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

MMA vs sC - GSTL 2013
      Set 1

MMA vs YoDa - WCS EU Season 3 Finals 2014
      Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5 | Set 6


“Every player tastes defeat. However the best players, as a tribute to all their efforts, will give everything they’ve got to stand up again.” - Darrell Royal

DongRaeGu may be one of the best IDs in SC2 because it informs us so much about his character, his background and his motives. It is fitting then that his rival had one of the other great IDs, MMA. Because MMA is a fighter, one who had been dealt an injury and was forced to retire from mixed martial arts. But he took his competitive attitude and his hard work and he went into BW and then later SC2.

And in many ways, MMA’s entire career has been a neverending fight. From the way he plays to how his career panned out. From the beginning, MMA felt like he was destined for greatness. He was chosen by Boxer. He was coached by Ryu Won (one of the truly great coaches of SC2). He found himself in a team he loved with a player he had idolized, and he called himself the Son of Boxer. So it was then that MMA’s career took a huge plunge as the SlayerS drama unfolded into the complete dissolution of SlayerS.

MMA was figuratively knocked out. The BL/infestor patch had come in which perfectly dealt with his style of play. He was abandoned and reviled by his former team. He was left with nothing; his form had completely fallen off. A normal pro would have retired. But MMA was no normal pro. MMA could still hear it in the back of his head. He could still taste the electric atmosphere as he walked down the path of Blizzcon. He wanted more than anything in his entire life to make it there again.



In boxing there is a figure of speech that goes, “Get off the mat”. It means once you've been beaten, you need to get back up to prove otherwise. And MMA had been knocked out more than once. Yet he persevered over and over and over again until he was able to get on one knee. He then fell off again only to push himself back up nearly 3 years after his last triumph on a Blizzcon stage. Against all odds, against circumstance, against time, against some of the best players in the world, MMA had overcome it all to stand upon the greatest stage of SC2 once more.

In all of SC2, the only players who have had a similar career arc are DRG and Bomber. DRG, years after his prime, was able to win Red Bull and get to the Ro8 of GSL. Bomber took 3 years of disappointments and being called a “third rate” terran by Tastosis before he got to win the WCS Season 2 Finals. Yet neither of them have ever quite captured the public imagination as MMA has.

He may have started off his career as the Son of Boxer, but it is clear now more than ever that is a discredit to MMA. Boxer may have created one of the greatest esports legacies of all time, but MMA has stepped out of that shadow. He has made his own career and with it one of the greatest legacies of SC2.

Play Style:



MMA is very much a fast paced aggressive player who likes to disrupt his opponents plans with drop play. This is especially interesting because WoL medviacs did not have speed boost. You were taking larger risks of losing your medivacs on the way there, being attacked when it went out and getting shot down in its return. But it was also because of that risk that MMA’s style during WoL was so exciting to watch. The only player who was even more committed to drops and multi-pronged harass was GuMiho.

But because they were so dedicated to drop play, it meant that when speed boost came out for HotS, their style was naturally countered. While it seems illogical, think about it like this: once Blizzard implemented speed boost they decided that protoss and zerg defense wasn’t strong enough, so they created the mothership core and increase muta speed and regen. Zerg and protoss players acquired better tools to counter the MMA/GuMiho style, which in turn made it more ineffective. In addition, every other terran could now emulate them and with decreased risks since they could now do the same kind of drop harass in faster time, with less skill, and with better retention. This mass drop style eventually turned from niche strategy only two players could master into a normal form of play, which forced opponents to develop stronger responses.

Later on in his career, MMA took to more normal standard styles of play, especially in his TvP. Even though players gradually improved their mechanics, MMA was still able to maximize his own APM to keep up. After falling out of favor, the drop style terran is back in flavor, and you can still see some of MMA's old flair depending on the map, opponent and race.

Difference between MMA and Nestea

When I was drafting the list I initially had Nestea above MMA. After all, Nestea had the prestige of the triple GSL victor, was a Godlike innovator in a time when zerg was weak, was a player who had multiple deep runs in the GSL and had gone to few but strong events. As I listed accomplishment after accomplishment, player after player, it became clear however that MMA own list dwarfed even Nestea's enviable resume. MMA had two GSL wins of his own and faced both personal and professional adversity in order to succeed. He created his own style that enthralled as much as it prevailed, and his relevance after 5 arduous years remains impressive.