Winning a championship may be proof of skill especially when it comes to League of Legends, but it isn't necessarily proof of strength.
After winning the League Of Legends Grand Championship, Lin "Lwx" Wei-Xiang, FunPlus Phoenix's bot laner, struggled to lift the trophy before stepping away and letting the rest of the team do the heavy lifting.
Following the Chinese-Korean squad's victory of 3-0 over G2 Esports, Lwx tried to lift the cup while confetti rained down from the ceiling. However, Lwx wasn't able to lift the heavy trophy, so the rest of the team jumped in and lifted it together, proving that they really are a team game. Jungler Gao "Tian" Tian-Liang managed to lift it with a little help from Liu "Crisp" Qing-Song.
Sure, the situation might seem extremely funny, but the Summoner's Cup is actually surprisingly heavy. In fact, it weighs 70 pounds (or 32 kilograms). Apparently, no one at Riot gave much thought to how much a trophy should weigh, so they ended up with one of the largest trophies in the world. Even the Stanley Cup, the championship trophy awarded annually to the National Hockey League playoff winner, weighs only half as much.
Lwx has become the first player without a single death in a world finals match in the history of the game. Tian, who helped him lift the cup, got the title of MVP of the Grand Finals for in-game achievements that set his team up for the victory that brought them the title. The 19-year-old joined FunPlus before the 2019 spring season and is under contract with them until 2021. However, it is speculated that the team could receive generous offers for both his brain and brawn in the coming period.
Thankfully, the community rushed to Lwx's defense after the incident. "He's probably just going through symptoms of an Adrenalin rush. Like you would get if you just won the world championship in something and you won a crapton of money. It gives you shaky hands," wrote Reddit user u/SC2sam.
Many fans were scared that the trophy might break, as this has happened in the past. However, this has only happened to winners of Blizzard's Hearthstone, as Eddie Lui received the title of Bucharest Masters Tour champion only to have his trophy fall apart in his hands. The same thing happened a year before that, when winning team RunAway picked up the trophy to the same result. A sturdy trophy, it seems, is a heavy trophy.