JDG JunJia: "It's an honor to have Tabe as my coach"

After an imperial performance against , now advances to the last-chance qualifier of their group, in hopes of clinching a berth in the First Stand 2026 Knockout Stage. With standing in their path, the second seed from the LPL will be sure to unleash the full extent of their wrath on their Western counterparts, hoping to reinforce the dominance of Korean and Chinese teams, who have yet to drop a single game against other regions. In an exclusive interview, jungler sat down with Sheep Esports to discuss upcoming matchups, his return to the LPL, and to send a message to the struggling LCP.

Yu "JunJia" Chun-Chia: “LOUD did a quite good job in terms of early game aggression. But luckily, we were able to get a very smooth victory. Hopefully, we can maintain very good momentum in our next match and have a really good series against LYON.

JunJia: In previous years, teams could use lane swaps to avoid the laning phase. Now that it’s much harder to do so, and since teams from the LPL and LCK tend to be stronger in lane, they’ve been able to build early advantages more easily and snowball games, which in turn increased the gap between regions.

JunJia: [Smiles] It definitely feels like we face each other in nearly all international tournaments we compete in. Against Inspired, I’ll need to put in a lot of efforts to do what’s expected of me so that I can match him. If I can achieve that, it’ll make the match easier for us to win.

JunJia: After the loss during the LPL finals, we’ve taken a lot of time to give each other feedback and analyze what went wrong. We’ve faced BLG a couple of times, I hope we can do better the next time we face them. Hopefully we can beat LYON so that we can show our talents and have an exciting best-of-five against BLG.

JunJia: Back when I was in EDG, I didn’t feel like I was playing really well, especially on stage. I still think back to those times a lot. I feel like I’ve had a lot of personal growth year after year, so I’m quite happy to be back. Having managed to qualify for First Stand in our first split together makes me really happy because it vindicates that and shows I’ve made a lot of improvements.

JunJia: Last year, when I still played in and Tabe was coaching , I already had a lot of respect for him as a coach. AL were very strong back then, and I knew their coaching staff had a lot of impact. It feels like an honor to have someone like Tabe as my coach today, and I know he can teach me a lot and help me achieve even more growth as a player, especially during practice. I really want to give a lot of appreciation to him and all of our coaching staff.

JunJia: I actually think that HongQ himself is really good at adapting to new environments. JDG also has a really solid coaching staff and a great roster, everyone is really nice and easygoing, so I haven’t really had to help him. He already has a lot of synergy with everyone and is fully a part of JDG now.

JunJia: From my experience, being in the LCP is a little difficult because it’s hard to have good quality scrims and learn from them. The best thing the region can do is just to keep attending international events and try to learn as much as possible when they face off against top teams from other regions, as well as scrimming them when abroad. With that experience, they will be able to improve and grow much faster than when competing regionally. They definitely had a hard time at First Stand, so I really hope that they will do better in the future, maybe even at MSI.”