The Good, Bad, and the Ridiculous of Proleague

Edition 4: Master of Ceremonies, Esports Fits, and Forgotten Brilliance

by Mizenhauer

With little news forthcoming about the future of StarCraft II, why not take a break to look back into the distant past?

Yes, I'm back with another edition of The Good, Bad, And Ridiculous of Proleague, celebrating the greatest StarCraft II tournament series of all time (surely no one would disagree with me on proclaiming something as the greatest).

Last time, I cringed at CJ Entus' K-Pop cosplay, lamented the loss of the Proleague sniper role, and pondered the shadiest sponsor we've ever seen in esports.

This time, I'm taking on ceremonies, team fashion, and a pair of forgotten-yet-great performances from the past.

And, the award for the greatest ceremony in Proleague history goes to…

While Korean progamers have a history of being reserved and humble in the wake of victory, Proleague was often the place where they would break from the norm. Even non-BW fans know of FireBatHero's legendary beach ceremony during the Proleague playoffs, where he stripped down and took a swim in Gwangalli's waters.




While no one took it to that extreme in StarCraft II (nor League of Legends, nor Overwatch, nor PUBG, nor Kart Rider for that matter), Proleague continued to be the stage for memorable celebrations. KeSPA even temporarily added a "best ceremony" category to its awards, after years of keeping it reserved for more serious honors such as "most wins" or "Finals MVP."

The first edition of the award in 2014 was given to Stork, who, after defeating Flash, donned a Darth Vader mask before firing a few imaginary blaster shots at the KT bench. His 'blaster' here was a ruler, poking fun at Flash's insistence on perfectly replicating his training environment inside the Proleague booth with meticulous ruler measurements for his peripheral placement.




Compared to the previous year, 2015 was less fertile ground. When I checked and saw that Stats had won the award, there wasn't a performance that came rushing to back from my memories. After reviewing the tape, I found that he had performed an eclectic series of ceremonies, which were probably more humiliating to him than his opponents. Some cursory research suggests he earned the award for awkwardly mimicking the beams that come out of a Colossus by waving his arms around following a win against Cure. It wasn’t amazing by any means, but perhaps the field of award candidates really was that weak in 2015.




While I'm not saying Stats single-handedly killed the best ceremony award, it was conspicuously removed in 2016. This would turn out to be a foolish overreaction, as the season would introduce the Master of Ceremonies himself: MC.

To be fair, no one could have predicted MC would show up in Proleague. His career had been on a downward slope since late 2014, and he had even temporarily retired in 2015 (before revoking his retirement in the same year). However, midway through the 2016 season, CJ found themselves facing a brutal roster crunch, and eventually became desperate enough to bring in the 2-time GSL champion.

As it turned out, MC's demise was greatly exaggerated. He was the perfect sparkplug in limited playtime, actually putting up a winning record of 4-3. Not only that, but we discovered that MC’s signature swagger hadn’t gone anywhere. The first of his celebrations came after he upset Zest early in Round 3. Grabbing a water bottle, MC proceeded to mimic WWE wrestler Triple H by blasting the water straight from his mouth and into the air. The casters, who seemed to have entered some kind of delirium, did their best to capture the moment, with Valdez suggesting MC should forever be called the Whaletoss (clearly not a wrestling fan) while GTR remarked "my body is so wet right now."




And, while that would already have been enough, MC blessed us with another incredible ceremony not long after. This time, he paid homage to Cristanio Ronaldo’s trademark "Siiuuuuu!!!" celebration, leaping and twirling in the air with all the grace of CR7 himself.




While never actually given the award, MC’s ceremonies were undoubtedly the most entertaining to have graced SC2 Proleague (at least the regular season). While MC might not have featured in my list of top 10 GOAT SC2 players, I'm proclaiming him the GOAT when it comes to SC2 Proleague ceremonies.

Life Finds More Ways to Ruin Things

While Life's gravest crime against StarCraft has been well documented and thoroughly discussed, he was the perpetrator of some lesser 'evils' as well.

Life began his career as a member of the underfunded and overmemed team of ZeNEX, where he achieved little of note (only receiving the acclaim of many TL.net forum-goers who were addicted to watching small online cups) before joining Startale in 2012. Startale was one of the biggest teams in StarCraft II at that time, and perhaps it's not a coincidence that Life finally realized his potential there. The young Zerg proceeded to go on his legendary 2012-14 run that culminated in a BlizzCon win, setting him up to become one of the all-time greats (before his fall from grace, anyway).

In 2015, Life changed teams once again, this time joining the storied KT Rolster squad. While it was a blockbuster signing at the time, Life fell far short of expectations. Whether it was trouble adjusting to the new environment or just a 'normal' slump after an incendiary 3-year run, Life simply wasn't the ace-caliber player KT had expected.

Now, let's move ahead to a more specific date in history: January 27th of 2016. If this date feels familiar to you, it's because it's just a couple of days before Life was arrested for match-fixing. And, while Life was about to be at the center of the news story in StarCraft II history, he was already making normal-big news at this time by being the centerpiece of a transaction. With Proleague starting in less than a month, KT Rolster and Startale (now rebranded as the Afreeca Freecs) agreed to a trade, sending Life back to his boyhood team in exchange for Leenock.

This deal looked quite reasonable for about two days, with Startale/Afreeca getting a chance to give their prodigal son a second act, while KT Rolster got back a solid rotation player in return. But when the match-fixing scandal was unveiled a few days later, Startale—a team who had once printed “we need a sponsor” on their jerseys in an attempt to stay afloat, and had narrowly escaped a grim fate thanks to Afreeca—found themselves without Leenock nor Life. It appeared that the powers-that-be deemed that even the most extreme of extenuating circumstances was no reason to void a perfectly good trade (surely KT Rolster didn't know anything beforehand, right?), and Startale were left high and dry.

Against all odds, the undermanned Startale/Afreeca team actually put up a reasonable fight that season, ending the season in fourth place before losing to SKT in the first round of the playoffs. We'll never know what would have happened if Life had never committed the cardinal sin of professional sports, but for a few days in January, it felt like we might have a chance to see something special. A fallen champion returns to his original team for a chance at redemption? Come on, that only happens in movies.

Unfortunately, reality told a very different story: Life ruins things for everyone else.

Did Leenock actually have the best micro all along?

The Leenocktopus only played a bit part in the last tale, but he deserves to be given his flowers in a standalone segment.

If someone asked you who had the best micro in StarCraft II, the following names would probably come to mind. Heart of the Swarm Maru certainly has a claim, as his ability to split and rearrange his army allowed him to snipe Colossus no other Terran could. herO and PartinG are strong Protoss candidates, with their surgical Stalker and Sentry micro earning them countless wins. More recently, Clem has thrown his hat into the ring, controlling multiple armies with unmatched precision.

Well, how about Leenock? Okay, maybe his name is a bit out of place when you're considering the entirety of StarCraft II history, but the beauty of Proleague was that for a single match, you could be convinced that any player was the best at anything.

Case in point: this single play from Leenock. For me, this moment of pure brilliance is the first that comes to mind when I think of inspirational micro.

Leenock and Armani were far from the best players in the league when they met during the 2015 season (Leenock went 11-7 in Proleague, while Armani only managed a 3-4 record). In the grand scheme of things, their regular season match was rather low-stakes, with neither SBENU (formerly Startale) nor Samsung having a realistic chance of figuring into the title race. Despite this, Leenock saw fit to execute one of the great, and unfortunately forgotten plays we'll ever see in StarCraft II.

In a throwback to Brood War, the two Zergs entered into a Mutalisk vs Mutalisk war on Terraform. Leenock got the advantage during the normal course of play, taking a series of solid, but not game ending, engagements. Needing to catch up, Armani turned to Infestors, hoping that he could overcome the numbers disadvantage by chaining Fungal Growths.

Needing to sculpt a perfect engagement, Armani lucked out when Leenock ventured too far into the enemy main with his Mutas. Armani's Infestors waddled up the ramp, coming within millimeters of turning the tide. But, just as Armani pressed the key that would lead to Leenock’s defeat, Leenock pulled off one of the most breathtaking splits in StarCraft II history.




With Fungal Growth only a fraction of a second from landing, Leenock split all 59 of his Mutas with so much speed and grace that only two were snared when the Fungal arrived. It was the kind of move that made you understand the nickname "Leenocktopus," because you'd need eight arms and legs to pull off that kind of split.

Despite that moment of brilliance, the game went on for quite a while. The continued threat of Fungals delayed Leenock from dealing a killing blow, and he eventually won in a sloppy 36-minute game. Perhaps that’s why Leenock was never given credit for his excellence, or it could just be that no one likes watching ZvZ—much less with Mutalisks. But, after fourteen years of watching and eight years of writing about StarCraft, I still consider it one of the best exhibitions of pure micro in the history of the game.

Was Samsung’s Sense of Fashion as Good as We Remember?

When it comes to StarCraft fashion, one team immediately comes to my mind. Samsung Galaxy may not have been the most successful team (their ace players had a bad habit of falling apart at the least opportune times), but they were sporting puffy winter coats with big collars before they became a fad in the 2020's. I decided to take a trip down memory lane to confirm if Samsung Galaxy were, indeed, as fashionable as I thought.

Exhibit one is RorO. 2013-14 was a terrible period for Korean haircuts, as the jagged sideburns that were first spotted in Brood War made a less than desirable return. Despite all that, RorO managed to pull off this unkempt look, partly in thanks to his pair of Samsung Galaxy jackets (oh, how I miss the Samsung Galaxy Khan days).



Fast forwarding a bit, a video previewing the first KeSPA Cup of 2015 gave us a great look at the uniforms at the time. Jin Air was still sporting their long sleeve jerseys with way too many buttons and pockets. PartinG (Yoe) went with the extremely basic 'team logos on a t-shirt' look, while CJ's ByuL and herO were just slightly more sophisticated with their team logo zip-ups. Fantasy (Dead Pixels) was clad in another esports staple in the team polo, which he seemed less than enthused by (maybe because it made him look like a dollar store employee). Still, he probably wasn't too envious of Soulkey (TCM), who wore the dreaded 'we have to make an athletics jersey for people sitting at a computer' top. Meanwhile, Losira kept it simple and clean with MVP's nondescript team jacket. The KT contingent (Life, Zest, and Stats) were clothed in some simple long-sleeved shirts, which, for some reason, looked better than other similarly basic uniforms above.



The real show-stealer was Dear, who rocked Samsung's exquisitely designed team jacket. Somehow, it managed to convey F1-driver-crossed-with-galactic-navy-officer without looking like the dorkiest thing you had ever seen. Dear helped model his team uniform by striking a pose that radiated cool, pulling up his buttoned collar to the side of his face as if he had just given the order to obliterate some poor rebels hiding out on a mining colony. I don’t know if it was the collar, the glasses, or the snow white jacket, but Dear managed to pull this fit off perfectly.



My final example takes us back to the start, when Stork was performing his award-winning ceremony during the 2014 season of Proleague. As he returns to his teammates, I can’t help but notice his absurdly long, puffy white jackets with a fur lined hood. While puffer jackets were always trendier in Korea than in the rest of the world, one can't help but admire how Samsung Galaxy were ahead of their time.

Was Trap actually the Best Player of 2012? Statistics Show He Might Just Be!

Proleague, a tournament which was for so long the lifeblood of the Korean scene, can trace its roots all the way back to 2003, when OGN and MBCGame created the first iterations of professional StarCraft team leagues. The pair of cable channels threw their lot in together in 2005, forming the unified Proleague we would come to know and love. The league thrived in Brood War—becoming one of the most anticipated events on the calendar, and creating fandoms that survive to this day in other esports disciplines.

And, yet, when StarCraft II was released, Proleague was nowhere to be found. A complicated broadcasting rights controversy meant KeSPA wanted nothing to do with Blizzard, leaving only GOMTV's GSTL as a premier-tier team competition in the early going. But eventually, KeSPA and Blizzard worked things out, and Proleague once again became central to the StarCraft ecosystem in 2012.

That isn’t to say there weren’t hiccups. The 2012/13 season of Proleague, seeking a means to bridge the gap between Brood War and StarCraft II, decided that both games should be played during the now infamous hybrid Proleague.

Honestly, it was quite the debacle. While the two-game format was meant to ease the transition, it ended up displeasing fans of both games who had little interest in learning about the other (not to mention invoking the much warranted bitterness of BW fans who were seeing their favorite game gradually phased out before their very eyes). It also had the unintended effect of heavily favoring teams who had players with a stronger aptitude for StarCraft II. Since Ace Matches always took place in SC2, teams with these players had a huge advantage should the series go the distance.

The saving grace for the league was that the players who had been good at Brood War tended to be good-ish at StarCraft II as well. Big names like Jaedong, Stork, EffOrt and Flash did well in both games, while up-and-comers like Rain, herO, sOs and RorO represented their teams with aplomb. Fantasy was one of the standout players, parlaying his success in the latter days of Brood War into an excellent hybrid Proleague campaign. The SKT Terran went 8-3 in BW and 7-1 in StarCraft II, making him one of the best players in the league at both games.

However, the man who really stole the show (I say this knowing I’m the only one who thinks so), however, was Trap. The STX SouL Protoss was signed to the team in 2008, but it wasn’t until 2012 that he made his Proleague debut. Not much was expected from him, with the majority of the attention going to INnoVation/Bogus (a former runner-up in the rookie of the year race in 2009) and Mini (who had reached the quarterfinals of the 2012 Tving OSL). On top of that, Classic’s transformation from mediocre Terran to accomplished Protoss provided another distraction.



Despite all this, Trap quietly put together an incredible season during hybrid Proleague. He posted a league best 8-1 record in Brood War, with five of his wins (and his only loss) coming in PvP. He fared just as well in StarCraft II, finishing second best to Rain (who had 14 wins) with a 11-5 record. Trap’s combined record of 19-6 gave him the most wins of any player in the regular season (this excludes the playoffs which were held after each of the three rounds and at the end of the year), and the second best win percentage in the league behind FanTasy (76% and 79% respectively).

But, when one takes into account that Trap played 25 games compared to FanTasy’s 19, it’s clear that Trap was not only the rookie of the year, but he deserved to win the regular season MVP award. In a baffling twist, that went to Jaedong, despite a remarkably unremarkable season in which the Team8 Zerg won as many games as he lost (15-15 overall between Brood War and StarCraft II). Indeed, awards controversy knows no bounds across sports. Fortunately for Trap, he earned partial recompense a year later, as he was awarded finals MVP in his sophomore campaign for his 4-0 performance in the playoffs.

More than a decade later, Trap’s excellence during hybrid Proleague has been completely forgotten by the StarCraft community at large. This is mostly because everyone hated hybrid Proleague and wanted to forget it ever happened, which is pretty understandable. But give Trap some credit as well! He went on to have a great individual league career, winning six Liquipedia-premier events and placing runner-up in three Code S finals (and a second place finish at the 2015 IEM World Championship on top of that). It’s no wonder Trap’s early success was overshadowed by the much greater success he achieved in the years that followed. Still, it’s always worth going back and shining a light on achievements like this. After all, Proleague remains one of the most beloved competitions in StarCraft II history to this day—due in large part toplayers like Trap.

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