Last Friday marked the final quarterfinal of the 2025 World Championship between T1 and Anyone’s Legend. The best-of-five was long and exhausting for both sides — five grueling games, 46 champions banned by the time the first pick came through, and over four hours spent on stage. Yet, in the midst of that tension, T1 kept their composure and locked in Dr. Mundo for their jungler, Mun "Oner" Hyeon-jun — a champion he had never played before.

As the players walked onto the stage for Game 5, there was a long pause — likely due to a setup issue on Choi "Doran" Hyeon-joon’s side. During that break, T1 used the time to hold a chaotic but legendary discussion: should Oner really play Dr. Mundo? The jungler himself didn’t seem too excited about the idea, which worked really well for G2 Esports and Rudy "SkewMond" Semaan the day before against Top Esports.

To Mundo or not to Mundo

The conversation began with Oner admitting he had never played the champion before. Lee "Gumayusi" Min-hyeong then suggested he pick Nidalee instead — a champion he hadn’t played since the LCK Cup earlier in the year. But Ryu "Keria" Min-seok immediately backed the Mundo jungle plan, arguing it would give their botlane more freedom to play aggressively.

What followed was pure chaos. The T1 voice comms turned into a noisy debate as everyone tried to convince Oner to first-time the champion. He even opened the practice tool to try Mundo’s abilities, while the coaching staff chimed in, explaining what each spell did and when to use the ultimate. Panicked but committed, Oner eventually started reading Mundo’s ability descriptions during the champion select — ready to dive blind into the madman of Zaun for the decisive game, he finished the game 0/5/6 and got caught a few times; his game wasn’t perfect, but he got the job done.

The confidence and composure of champions

To put things into perspective, these voice comms didn’t come from a BO3 against DN Freecs, nor from a Game 3 of a BO5 versus G2 Esports* — this was Game 5 of the Worlds quarterfinals against Anyone’s Legend, the best Chinese team of the tournament. Yet, T1 didn’t flinch. You could hear them laughing despite the enormous pressure of the moment. Perhaps they just don’t feel it as much anymore, as Keria mentioned in a post-match interview — he’s no longer obsessed with victory the way he used to be, and it shows.

In contrast, T1 also released Doran’s player cam during that same sequence: while the rest of the team debated and joked about the pick, he stayed silent, visibly surprised by what was happening. Later, in his post-match interview, Doran said: “After joining T1, I can see how mentally strong my teammates are. I learned a lot from them. With that, I was able to make Worlds finals.”

*The author of this article is a LEC hater