On July 19th, 'KT Rolster' and 'MVP' brawled it out on the first series of the day on top the stage of OGN. Pulling out an unexpected pick in the form of Skarner, KT completely surprised MVP and took set 1. On the next set, MVP retaliated by banning out 4 ADC champions in an attempt to put Deft on hold. But their efforts were in vain, as KT completely overpowered them and took the 2nd set as well. With this win, KT has climbed back up to the 2nd place in the LCK leaderboards. And although all 5 members of the team showed stellar performance during the series, the two players who made the biggest impact, Smeb and PawN, were titled MVP.











As soon as the two MVPs walked up, Smeb was greeted by the casters as he is a frequent visitor to the MVP interview stage. Currently, Smeb is 2nd in the 'MVP point standings'. On a question asked if Smeb knew who the 1st place MVP is, Smeb commented, "I don't know... Maybe KurO?" He further added, "I'm enjoying my time catching up to him. I will put him on choke and slowly take back the 1st place."





LCK has recently been featuring lesser picked champions over a couple of days. And on the 1st set, KT pulled out Skarner. On a question regarding this, Smeb said, "Right now, less aggressive junglers[like Sejuani] are seeing play. So we were preparing Skarner for ourselves. At first, we were planning to save him for a different occasion; but at the same time, our team suggested that we use him before other teams start realizing that we have something up our sleeve." Then, PawN was asked if he enjoys having a passive(tank) champion as his jungler. "It's true that you would want a more aggressive jungler as a midlaner. But Score told me that Skarner is very strong 1 on 1. I had my trust in him. And after what I have seen, I think he is definitely a strong champion."





Smeb has received MVP on Rumble for the 4th time this split. He was asked by the casters on his opinion on the Gnar vs Rumble matchup. "Back then, Gnar was considered to be a counter to Rumble. But now, if both players are at the same level, I think Rumble has the advantage," he said.





KT is known by the fans from Korea as an "Early-game team" because the team showed struggles in the late-game in many of their past series. Regarding this, Smeb commented, "We are very aware of that. And so, we are constantly trying to refine our plays. But it's proving to be more than difficult to fix our issues."





On the 2nd set of the series, Smeb played Jarvan. For Smeb, he hasn't lost a single game with that champion this split. Regarding his reasons for picking Jarvan, Smeb said, "Jarvan saw little to no play in LCK. But when we went to Taiwan for 'Rift Rivals', we saw that Jarvan was utilized quite frequently by LMS and LPL teams. I was inspired by them, and I started practicing the champion."





Also, the botlane of KT is known to completely smash their opposing laners in a consistent manner. On a question asked to Smeb, he replied, "We don't even try to funnel our resources into the botlane. In games, I just suddenly hear the botlaners saying, "Hey guys~ we are about to destroy the botlane tower."





Finally, Smeb finalized the interview with a word to the fans. "We are well-known to always lose the 2nd set of a series. But I feel like we have finally broken that curse. The remaining teams that we have to play against are all strong... But we will do our best to show you nothing less than great performance. Thank you."