As the 2025
League of Legends World Championship approaches,
Rudy “SkewMond” Semaan is gearing up for his first Worlds with
G2 Esports. In an interview with
Sheep Esports, the rookie jungler shares how he’s preparing for the tournament, what he’s improving about his play, and keeping a clear mindset.
This is your first Worlds. What is the biggest challenge you expect both in gameplay and mindset, and how are you preparing to meet it?
Rudy "SkewMond" Semaan: "I'm really hyped! The first thing is not coming in with high expectations, and probably just staying in the present and living in the moment. Enjoy the moment as much as I can because obviously I will not commit to the tournament thinking that I'll win it all. I want to go into the tournament giving my best in the scrims and in my everyday routine so that I can actually have the chance to win it. But I don't want to just go into the tournament trying to prove that I'm the best, because if you want to be the best, then you have to earn it. And this starts with your daily life and how you manage your routine and scrims.
And yeah, for the in-game stuff, I think probably for me will be how to manage my playstyle regarding the tournament because I'll play against very different junglers and teams at, and also it's the best teams in the world, so every team is going to play differently and it's definitely not going to be the same as in LEC, so I'll have to look at the teams I'll face and just code them correctly so I can have a good idea of how I want to play the game
You said that exposing sometimes your own weakness might help to improve. So what are your own weaknesses that you discovered in 2025, and how did you overcome them?
SkewMond: One probably is how to not stay passive during the games. I actually realized that I was a lot of the time a bit passive during the games, and I was not really making some plays happen in the game, even though sometimes our comp has to do something, we have to be a bit aggressive, burn some flushes, et cetera. And yeah, for sure, for MSI, and before I was really passive. So I think that's probably one of my biggest weaknesses that I saw during this year. But I'm really happy that after MSI, I think I improved a lot regarding this, and I hope that I'll be able to show a good showing in this tournament
Who would you say is your biggest competitor? Who do you think is the player that you need to beat to prove yourself at this tournament?
SkewMond: I mean, if it's for the jungle, there are so many good junglers. I don't think that there is one that will, if you beat one jungler, people will be like, “Oh, you're the best.” If you're able to beat a lot of Asian teams, you will earn that title. And yeah, I don't really want to chase that individual reward and the people saying, “Oh, you are the best jungler” and blah blah blah… I really want me to think more in a team and as a team in general. And I don't really want to think about myself, and I don't want to compare myself necessarily against the other junglers. I want us to just perform well as a team, and I want people to say that G2 is the best team.
There are very few rookies who have this mentality. You have Ismael Pedraza and Romain Bigeard helping you all out. Did they help you out with this kind of mentality?
SkewMond: Yeah, for sure. Isma, our performance coach, helped me and helped all the players to improve their mindset, their mentality, their routine, almost everything in my life. What kind of food I eat and my routine in general. And for the mindset as well, he helped me a lot, individually, this year.
And yeah, I don't think it should be my goal to go into this tournament and think “Okay, if I can have — for example — 1K gold lead against Canyon (Kim Geon-bu) people who think I'm really good.” That's not my goal. I don't want to focus on that and lose the game afterward. I just want everyone to have a good showing and us winning the game in the end. So if it comes with me being 0/10, but with me doing some good plays in the game that helped us win the game, then I'll be really happy. That's my goal. I want to show that we are a good team and we are doing some nice stuff together that were linked up together, and yeah.
Have you already started working on any scrims? If yes, is there anything that you would like to share about what you learned during those scrims?
SkewMond: I am not really sure to be fair, it's really hard to say because I think every team, even from the same region, has a really different play style. Obviously, we didn't get to scrim so many teams, but I think that, for example, if we play against two teams from the LPL, I can tell you that one or the other is playing the game differently. And I think it all comes down to their players and how they play the game. So yeah, I can't really tell any specific difference between these regions, but for sure, I think it's really interesting to see how different each team plays. And I think that this is going to be a really fun tournament for fans to watch.
G2 and T1 have this international rivalry. You said you're not thinking of any one-on-ones in specific, but do you have any words for Mun "Oner" Hyeon-jun going into the tournament?
SkewMond: Naturally I'm just obviously hyped at the idea of facing him.
If we play T1, it would be a dream of mine. T1 is the team to look out for, the team that usually always wins Worlds. So if I'm able to meet them, meet Oner on the Rift, I'll just be really grateful and really honored to play against them. And if we meet them, I hope that we'll be able to win."
Header Photo Credit: Riot Games
