EGFlash?! Could the God of Brood War be Joining an American Team?

by Whitney "Neinball" Fairchild - 7 years ago

Disclaimer: This is entirely speculation on the part of the author.

Last night eSports personality and professional caster Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham revealed that next week Brood War legend Lee “Flash” Young Ho will be featured on the popular eSports program Live on Three and he’ll be making a big announcement on the show. The facts surrounding this are scarce but let’s take a look at what we know.

When players have big announcements it almost always means one thing, signing with a new team. If we follow this train of thought why would Flash, THE greatest Brood War player that has ever lived, be making an announcement on an English language show? Why not one of the many Korean news outlets? The answer: it’s a foreign team.

Now there are only two foreign (non-Korean) teams that are big enough to sign someone of Flash’s caliber and those are Team Liquid and Evil Geniuses. Even though both teams could potentially sign Flash there are a lot reasons that would push the needle in the direction of EG.

EG recently released one of their iconic players, Greg “IdrA” Fields, from the team due to some controversy regarding comments he made on Teamliquid.net. IdrA is one of the biggest names in Starcraft 2 and even though he is constantly surrounded with controversy he drew massive crowds of fans and was a great source of exposure for EG. One of EG’s other big names, Ilyes “Stephano” Satouri, has also been a great boon to the team. Stephano is considered by many to be one of the greatest foreign players in the world and has the stats to prove it. He ensures that the EG name gets added into the Quarter Finals of almost every tournament he enters, but recently his level of play has been seeming to be a bit more human. While still a fan favorite and great pillar of the EG brand, Stephano has been making comments lately that he won’t be renewing his contract when it expires in August and intends to retire from SC2. If he follows through with these statements it will be a big loss to EG not only in exposure due to Stephano’s popularity but to their overall performance in tournaments worldwide. Given these factors EG has a lot of incentive to make some big waves and get players that can rank high in tournaments to fill out the holes in their roster. Signing Flash would accomplish these goals and then some.

There is also one more bit of evidence that points towards EG and that’s the show, Live on Three, itself. DjWHEAT has very strong ties to EG since they share a large number of sponsors and he regularly features the EG team captain Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson, as well as other EG players, as a guests or co-hosts on his shows. Furthering the mystery the Korean translator for next week’s show is being kept a secret, why would something so simple be a secret? Because if they announced EG’s official translator, Seong-Hawn “Hwanni”, it’d be a dead give away.

We can’t know for certain but my gut tells me there is a good chance this will come true. And if I’m wrong? It was fun to speculate.