The final ticket for the 2026
World Championship on home soil was the prize two teams at the
League of Legends Championship Series (
LCS) Summer Split Playoffs competed for this past Saturday.
had run the Losers Gauntlet, and one final best-of-series victory would catapult them to Worlds. On the other corner,
had an upset loss and looked to extinguish the underdog’s flame.
The Mexican organization came out firing and jumped to an early lead. After going down 0-2, the Rebels found their comfort zone and stole a game back. The Pride were clutch and
punched the last ticket to Worlds with a 3-1 win. Kang “
" Sung-in had an exclusive interview with
Sheep Esports following his victory. He analyzed LYON’s problems this split, how they fixed them, and his interesting Twisted Fate play in Game 4.
I need to know your thought process behind diving Leona with Twisted Fate.
Kang “Saint” Sung-in: “I thought that, even if I died there, I had a 1K bounty, right? In that moment, I thought that if I gave the bounty to Leona and kept playing the game, they had no counterplay. If Caitlyn or Kha’Zix somehow got my bounty, it could be a problem. I wanted to get rid of my bounty and kill him, but I couldn’t; that’s it. After that,
(
Kacper Słoma) looked at me as if I was trash.
You took some extra time to talk with Inspired as the series finished. What were you two talking about?
Saint: I told him, “I told you we already won, chill!” He responded by exhaling in disappointment.
Shopify Rebellion finds its footing after falling behind 0-2 in a series. Did you feel any specific emotions when you lost Game 3?
Saint: We didn’t feel nervous. We didn’t have a great draft… We had a great draft, but didn’t play well early in the game. We had to be ahead early, but we weren’t. I think that’s it, but after the game, we said, “We are going to win, don’t worry. Just chill, guys.”
Last week you surprisingly lost to Cloud9. LYON seemed stressed and in disbelief at their gameplay against C9 compared to the rest of the year. Was this week the most stress LYON has felt this year?
Saint: These days, we couldn’t fix easy problems on our team. When we win, we win convincingly, but when we lose, it’s because we rush. That was our problem, and we couldn’t fix it easily because of our mentality. We’ve talked about it a lot in scrims recently, and I think we’re fixing it now.
Did LYON do anything different to fix these mistakes and avoid the pressure you didn’t feel?
Saint: Not really. During Lock-In, we didn’t talk much because we didn’t have a big problem to fix, so we just played the game. During this split, we had bigger problems because we lost our strengths, so we talked and tried to fix them.
In the post-match interview, Inspired discussed one interesting subject: LYON lost to C9 because they didn’t use their hands. What would you attribute the loss to: not using your hands or mentality?
Saint: Personally, my mentality was really weak.
Why was your mentality weak?
Saint: I was stressed from scrims, and I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. My coaches showed me my Split 1 comms and told me I was saying certain things in the moment. Now that I’ve heard the comms again, I noticed I didn’t have this problem with my calls back then.
You mentioned you were stressed from scrims. What was the root of the stress? Was it from the loss?
Saint: I don’t think it was losing because we got stressed even when we were winning. We didn’t play as well as last split.
Who do you think wins tomorrow? Who would you like to face?
Saint: I want C9 to reach the finals because I want to beat them in a final again. They didn’t make the finals last split, right? I want to beat C9 in the biggest final.
Do you have any words for Cloud9 or Team Liquid now that they know LYON is coming for them?
Saint: Nothing!”
