What's a king without a throne? Well, if none of Zhuo "knight" Ding and Jeong "Chovy" Ji-hoon is sure to finally get one at the end of the year, they both seem to be engaged in the most imperial road. But there is only a single crown waiting at the end of it. The League of Legends Worlds 2024 Swiss Stage, featuring the best teams in the World, will kick-off this Thursday. While a lot of narratives obviously include the defending champion T1, it has to be said that the Korean mastodonte was close to not even participate at the prestigious event this year. Indeed, KT Rolster was one win away from taking the LCK's fourth seed spot in the Regional Finals.

Individually, if Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok has been dominant most of his career, and is undoubtedly the greatest of all time, it has to be said that he is not the in-game main character of the midlane worldwide anymore. And one of the main narrative from this year's Worlds concern two of his worthy successors, from the two best leagues and teams of the planet in the past few years: The Chinese knight and the Korean Chovy.

Mirrored careers

While both embrace the same role as the GOAT, they also showed an unprecedented domination over their domestic leagues in the past few years, respectively the LPL and th LCK. Since there is no doubt both leagues are historically the best in the world, Chovy by winning LCK on three of his last four attempts, and knight by winning every LPL since 2023, are obviously two of the best players globally, at least recordwise.

As the Chinese also won the MSI with JDG last year, the Korean followed in 2024 with Gen.G but the two midlaners never succeeded on the highest of all stages: Worlds tournament. In fact, they both never even exceeded semi finals in that competition as knight reached this stage twice, once with Top Esports, in 2020 (losing to Suning 1-3) and last year, with JDG (lost to T1, 1-3). For its part, Chovy only reached the gates of Worlds final once, in 2022, losing 2-3 to DRX.

The Asian midlaners also started their carreer at the same time, both playing in academy starting in 2017 before joining the best league from their region in Summer 2018. They were not as successful since knight joined the dysfunctionals Suning at the time, while Chovy joined the freshly promoted org, which would soon become legendary because of their repeated second places finish in LCK: Griffin.

In-game gods

While Chovy has became the franchise player of Gen.G, and lifted every LCK trophies since Summer 2022 with this organization he eventually failed to maintain this domestic titles win streak this summer, after losing against HLE. The midlaner therefore won 4 of them. knight, on the other hand, has never been a franchise player since he won LPL with three different teams: Top Esports in Summer 2020, JDG in both 2023 splits and BLG in both 2024 splits. The actual Bilibili Gaming's midlaner is the only player from LPL/LCK with a domestic titles win streak still alive at the moment, and now has five of them attached to his name.

Not only collectively they've performed outstandingly well, especially in the last two years, but it's their individual skills that sets them apart from the other players so much. In terms of statistics, Sheep Stats confirm that knight, is the top one mid from LPL, and top three players overall in his league with a general rating of 73 all year long (link here for more details). It's even more glaring for Chovy that is not only the number one LCK's midlaner throughout the year, but also the first player from LCK overall (link here for more details).

An heavy crown?

As the two midlaners have so many similarities in their career, and have been particularly on the top for the past few years, it would be expected that they faced each other on numerous occasions. But it's nothing of the sort, as the two actual best midlaners on the planet had not clashed since Worlds 2020 before the MSI 2024.

Since the Korean won two series against BLG during the mid season tournament (3-1 and 3-1) this year, the balance obviously tips a bit in his favour on the head to head, for the moment. But the gap seemed to be closing this Summer, as Gen.G lost in final (2-3 against HLE) while knight and Co only dropped one game from their entire playoffs run. Two different teams might show at Worlds as the cards have been reshuffled.

Now that their paths have crossed so many times, now that they're both at the very top of the best leagues in the worlds for the past two years, they are simply engaged in a battle that is way bigger than themselves. A battle for their fans, their teams, their leagues and their countries. And if their battle is way bigger than themselves, it's because Chovy and knight are bigger than anyone else. That's why the crown has never been that heavy. Because one of these two titans is coming for it.