Going into the Dreamleague Major, it was hard to say who would end up in the finals beyond Liquid. After TI7, Liquid have still shown themselves to be the best team in the world. While not completely impervious, they have shown themselves to be a step ahead of the competition with their play style and consistency. But in the end the finals turned out to be a rematch between two of the most storied players in all of Dota 2 history, Clement “Puppey” Ivanov and Kuro “KuroKy” Salehi Takhasomi.

Once upon a time the two of them were the duo. The tag-team core that formed all-star rosters around them. In Na`Vi, they were the support core that defined the style of what has been Na`Vi’s best roster in 2013. Once the team disbanded, the two of them left to create Team Secret. This eventually became the all-star team of the West, the Western answer to Team DK. The team was only interested in winning and as roster shuffle locks were not enforced, they brought in and players out of the team like a game of musical chairs. In the end, the team settled on: Puppey, KuroKy, Artour “Arteezy” Babaev, Ludwig “zai” Wahlberg, and Gustav “s4” Magnusson. Every player on the team was hailed as one of, if not the best at their role, and together they dominated four of the five tournaments in the run-up to The International 5.

But at TI5 itself, the enterprise imploded. The egos came out of control as the team faced failure for the first time. It was a catastrophic failure and in the midst of that failure a scapegoat needed to be found. Arteezy blamed KuroKy for the loss and the rest of the community followed suite. KuroKy understood Arteezy’s frustration as he had been a young talented star once and he tried to explain as much in his post, but the reasonable response only seemed to flame the fires even harder. In the end it was clear that there was no way the team could stick together and in the end they all left their separate ways.

It was at this point that Puppey and KuroKy came to a critical juncture. Puppey let Jacky “EternaLEnVy” Mao set the lineup for the next Secret which was filled with a majority of veteran players. The team was immiedately successful as they won the MLG World Finals, got second at the Frankfurt Major and won the Shanghai Major.

In contrast to that, KuroKy’s new stack didn’t have such incredible results out of the game. But KuroKy had also decided to try something completely new. Perhaps watching the TI5 finals where young up-and-comers battled for the crown spurred his decision. Or perhaps he believed he needed to mold young players into his way of thinking of Dota 2 to create a harmonious team.

Either way, KuroKy went the complete opposite way. His new team 5Jungz only had one veteran in Adrian “FATA-” Trinks. Everyone else was either a rookie or had yet to make their debut in a big way: Ivan “MinD_ContRoL” Borislavov Ivanov, Jesse “JerAx” Vainikka, and Lasse “MATUMBAMAN” Urpalainen. Their start was slow going, but KuroKy had convinced the others to follow his lead. They weren’t looking for results, they were looking at the process. The ability to grow, change, and become better from tournament to tournament.

This culminated in an incredibly successful year as Liquid won EPICENTER in 2016 and got second place at both the Manilla and Shanghai Major. As Liquid rose to the forefront, Secret fell apart. Secret had tried to roster shuffle into better results, but this time the results were not forthcoming as they hit disaster levels. Liquid on the other hand rose stronger, but both ended up failing at TI6.

From 2016-2017 was when things started to change for both of them. Puppey could no longer surround himself with the Western All-stars and instead went to SEA to get their all-star players. KuroKy in turn got the best player in Dota 2 in Amer “Miracle-” Al-Barqawi. While incredibly talented, Miracle- was still a young player, someone who had been raised up in OG and the belief of a family team. OG was no longer that family, but he believed that KuroKy’s Liquid could be. In addition to him, Liquid also got former coach Kanishka “BuLba” Sosale to fill out the roster as JerAx had left.

Neither were particularly successful early on. Puppey and Secret had to eventually come to terms with the fact that the all-star roster could no longer work in a world where you couldn’t continuously change the roster when the team ran into problems. For Liquid, they needed a better player. Both started to slowly fix their problems. Secret eventually gave up on the idea of building up all-stars in every position and instead shifted to young rising talents more in the line of what KuroKy had done. The first-star player they build around was Yeik “MidOne” Nai Zheng, who had been one of the star players of Fnatic in their 4th place run at TI6. The other building blood was a young support player in Yazied “YapzOr” Jaradat.

As for Liquid, they got Maroun “GH” Merhej as their fifth player. He was the final piece of the puzzle. The team slowly built up after that as they won bigger and bigger events. It started with DreamLeague 6. They then went on to win Starladder Season 3 and Starladder Invitational 2. Their biggest victory came at EPICENTER 2017 where they proved themselves to be one of the best teams in the world. At TI7, the team did well in the group stages, but crumbled in the first round of the playoffs.

KuroKy realized that the team was crumbling again. Too many of them were inexperienced and he could see the fear in GH’s eyes. He rallied them together and made them “stop giving a fuck”. As Daigo Umehara once said, “It may seem contradictory, but, in my experience, letting go of winning encourages victory.” They then made an epic run through the loser’s bracket to win the entire event.

After TI7 was when Secret started to rally together to something greater. Beyond Puppey, YapzOr and MidOne, the team filled out with Marcus “Ace” Hoelgaard and FATA-. In a strange way the current stack of Secret mirrors the first stack that KuroKy made with 5Jungz. There was the captain, a secondary veteran player in FATA-, two young talented cores and one very talented support player. Secret has slowly grown in strength from event to event and eventually beat Liquid at ESL Hamburg. Secret then fell to Virtus.Pro in the finals of the event.

The biggest confrontation was at DreamLeague 8. There the two teams battled each other in the winner’s final of the tournament where Secret once again beat Liquid in a close 2-1 series. Liquid ran through the loser’s finals to come back to the grand finals where the two teams battled in a surprisingly close finals. Though the score was 3-0 in Secret’s favor, the first two games were in contention for a long period of time.

Now here we are, the history of KuroKy and Puppey has now unfolded into the top echelons of Dota 2 competition. Ks.int, Nirvana.int, GGNet, Na`Vi, Secret. Puppey and KuroKy, KuroKy and Puppey. Friends that had become rivals. Star players that had become leaders. Leaders that had become two of the greatest leaders in all of Dota 2 history. Now their history and rivalry will unveil at the top of the world as both seek to be the best team in Dota.