Overwatch League casters Christopher "Montecristo" Mykles and Erik "DoA" Lonnquist sit down with Tyler Erzberger to discuss Chan-Hyung "Fissure" Baek's benching in the Overwatch League quarterfinals and how it affected the L.A. Gladiators. (5:03)

Professional Overwatch gamer Baek "Fissure" Chan-hyung doesn't care what you think of him.

Fissure, 21, suddenly retired from the esport and its major competition, the Overwatch League, last year in June. It was a stunning move from a player who was regarded as one of the best players at his position, main tank, in the world. But that was Fissure. He decided on something and did it. A few weeks later on his own personal Twitch streaming channel, he went as far as to leak upcoming plans to the league and its format, citing "I'm retired now" as his reason for spilling the news.

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And just as it seemed it would be the end for the lanky, bespectacled force of personality, Fissure announced his retirement from pro play was now over after only four months away. He felt like coming back, so he did so by joining the Vancouver Titans franchise, receiving a warm welcome-back gift in the form of a $3,000 fine from the Overwatch League.

His retirement saga was confusing and compelling all at the same time. That, in a nutshell, is Fissure.

The Vancouver Titans are Fissure's fourth team in less than three seasons in the Overwatch League -- but they might be the best fit for him. Carlton Beener/Activision Blizzard

"Following retirement, I was focusing a lot on [Teamfight Tactics]," Fissure told ESPN through a translator. "Even while during Overwatch, I was playing a lot of it. After that didn't go well, I basically became a person that would sit home all day and only play games. I thought that I had to at least do something, so when I got the opportunity to join [Vancouver], I took it."

When he first started playing Overwatch at a professional level back in his home country of South Korea in 2017, the only thing Fissure was known for was being one of the best players in the game. If he was in a game, his team was far more often the favorite than the underdog. By the time the Overwatch League and its franchises were announced, he was one of the biggest names on the market, eventually getting scooped up along with some of his hometown teammates to play for the London Spitfire.

What seemed like the beginning of a long and fruitful tenure on one of the league's premier franchises turned sour when he barely played during the first quarter of the season, the Spitfire preferring Hong "Gesture" Jae-hee and his chemistry with the team over Fissure and his aggressive playstyle, which needed to be in the center of a team's composition to function. London already had its chosen star players to build around, and Fissure, on the bench, wasn't getting too many opportunities to shine.

Before the halfway point of the season, the Spitfire moved on from Fissure, transferring him to the Los Angeles Gladiators in hopes of giving him a team that could build around him.

"Fissure is one of the smartest main tanks in the league, but we've struggled to fit him into the team in terms of synergy," Lee "Bishop" Beom-joon, the head coach of the Spitfire at the time, said in a statement about the move. "While we didn't want to lose him, he is very competitive and seeks the playing time befitting a player of his caliber."

At first, the move seemed to be a win-win. The Spitfire were one of the best teams in the league with a roster that worked together in sync and the Gladiators were surging with Fissure as their centerpiece. A cult of personality, the team bent to his style and his willingness to play in the face of the enemy, with the thought process being if Fissure went on the offensive, the rest of the Gladiators would follow.

This string of success and happy times would continue all the way until the playoffs, when, in what would become a trademark, things started to become muddled around Fissure. The Gladiators benched Fissure seemingly out of nowhere -- merely a week after he had been a serious entry in the MVP discussion.

"Fissure will not be playing during Match 1 of the OWL Playoffs," the Gladiators released in a public statement. "The Gladiators believe that the most effective practice and preparation is necessary in order to perform well in Playoffs. With that, the team has decided that having Luis 'iRemiix' Galarza Figueroa starting at the main tank gives the team the best chance to win."

Rumors started to spread that Fissure was more than a handful to deal with in practice and that, although things seemed to be working on the field, everything was burning from inside the organization. He wasn't happy. The Gladiators weren't happy. Fissure apparently wanted to be on an all-Korean-speaking team, and the Gladiators, a mixed roster from around the world, couldn't deliver him his wish. So in what should have been the most important games of his professional career, Fissure sat out, watching his team get eliminated from the playoffs without playing a single second.

The merry-go-round started again that offseason. Fissure got his wish by playing for an all-Korean-speaking lineup in the Seoul Dynasty. It was a match made in heaven. Seoul were the de facto South Korean national team with owners that not only walked around with deep pockets but cared about putting on an authentic hometown product. Following an inaugural season in which they failed to live up to expectations, Fissure's signing was supposed to reignite the excitement about the franchise, giving Seoul (and Fissure) fans hope that the second season of Overwatch League would be different.

It wasn't. He wasn't. Fissure bounced around the lineup as they switched out components to see which created the best synergy, eventually leading to what would be his four-month retirement tour, saying he had fallen out of love with the game and that he wanted to look toward something new.

Fissure's time on the Seoul Dynasty started with a lot of promise -- and ended with a shocking retirement. Photo by Robert Paul/Provided by Blizzard Entertainment

Looking back at all his former teams, the outspoken main tank doesn't hold ill will toward any of his past franchises except for one.

"The only team I despise is London," Fissure said. "They didn't notify me early I was being traded. They just told me that I was out. I wasn't even given a chance to give a proper goodbye to my teammates."

When it comes to competing against the Spitfire, however, he tries to treat them as if he's playing against any other team. He played them as a part of the Los Angeles Gladiators and then again in Seoul. Two years removed from the transfer, his main focus is on his current team, the Vancouver Titans, and the goal of winning a league championship following a season in which Vancouver came up just short in the grand final.

Around his teammates, Fissure is like any other player, laughing and smiling, his teammates poking fun at him as he's conducting an interview. The difference between him and a majority of everyone else in the league is that when he has a problem or has something on his mind, he doesn't calculate the pros and cons in his head -- he just says it. It's what led to him getting fined by the league for leaking information on stream and one of the reasons pointed at to why he's now on his fourth franchise before the third year of Overwatch League has even concluded.

"They live their life, I live my life," Fissure said when asked how he feels about his critics. "It's whatever."

So far his time in Vancouver hasn't resulted in any fines or whispers of a needed change. Instead, for the first time, Fissure seems happy with his Titans teammates, the all-Korean roster back in their home country at the moment and playing online due to the global coronavirus pandemic. Because of the unanticipated circumstances, the Titans have played only four matches, and though they've started off 2-2, Fissure has played in all of their games with no signs of a transfer, trade, release or retirement in sight.

But you're never 100% sure what's going to happen next when it comes to the world of Overwatch's most perplexing antihero.