A year ago, we announced Eon-yeong "Impact" Jung would come back to Team Liquid after playing for 2 years with Evil Geniuses and FlyQuest. Since his return, he ended the organization's losing streak in the LCS and helped secure the trophy in the Spring Split while also dominating throughout the Summer Split, where they qualified for the grand final and aim for a domestic grand slam. Considered the very best player in the league recently, Impact was named MVP of the Summer Split.

He is the second top laner to win the award, following Summit in Spring 2022, and the third player from TL to receive it, after Doublelift and CoreJJ. The other top voted players were CoreJJ and Inspired. He is one of the oldest players to have ever won MVP across all four major regions.

"I mean, who else?"

Starting his career in Korea in 2012 and winning the World Championship title a year later with SK Telecom T1, Impact now has one of the longest careers still active on the circuit. Moving to the NA LCS in 2015, he has since collected 6 regional titles in the LCS and is set to compete in another final this Summer Split, where his team is the heavy favorite after an unprecedented domination in recent weeks, potentially securing his seventh title.

A few weeks ago, the veteran toplaner was asked for his thoughts on the possibility of winning the MVP trophy, to which he responded: "I mean, who else?". He couldn't be more right as he is part of the first team in LCS history to win a split without losing a single game - although this is easier with only 7 series to play - with a track record of 7-0.

At 29 years old, the player has demonstrated his ability to adapt his playstyle to meet his team's needs. At ease on tank duty, he carried many games on Ornn or K'Sante recently, and has never been disturbed by swaplanes. His Jax has also been proven to be the very best of the region as he completely dismantled the laning phase against Eric "Licorice" Ritchie (Dignitas) and Park "Thanatos" Seung-gyu (Cloud9).

The best western toplaner?

On top of his domestic dominance in North America, Impact has also played a big part of Team Liquid's international performances this year. Defeating Fnatic twice at MSI and EWC and controlling Óscar "Oscarinin" Muñoz throughout the two series, it seems the only remaining western toplaner who could match him is Sergen "BrokenBlade" Çelik. But we will have to hope for an encounter at Worlds in a month. Caps, LEC's season MVP, said in a recent interview that "Fnatic lost twice to TL, but I think third time's the charm. I’m hoping for a rematch at Worlds, and if they can’t take them down, we will." We surely hope for a new EUvNA clash to decide who's the best MVP player in the West.