'Uzi' — After an Imperfect Curtain Call at S9

An Ezreal with 18.8K damage dealt was Jian Zihao’s final curtain call at S9.

The two casters hardly knew what to say, the bullet comments were one long wail, and a mourning hush settled over every forum. A year ago, on this very same October 20, the RNG we had staked our hopes on likewise fell at the hands of a Western team.

But I paid no attention to the chatter or the consolations. My eyes never left that one player.

Uzi wiped his sweat-slick face; at some point the trademark chewing gum had gone still in his mouth. He glanced at the desk where he had fought through an entire youth, unplugged his keyboard and mouse, and walked slowly, a little unsteadily, toward the players’ tunnel.

His back, as in every match before it, was soaked through with the sweat of high-intensity play, but the contours rising beneath his jersey were far more pronounced than they used to be. At 17, Uzi’s back had carried nothing but a young man’s muscle—none of this crosshatching left behind by injury.

Uzi walks off in defeat

Today, ‘Uzi’—the three letters printed across his tournament jersey—no longer carried the deathly majesty that once struck fear into every AD carry alive. All I could see was a man attempting what he knew could not be done: the tragic grandeur of a hero at the end of his road, the keen resolve of one who departs and will not return.

He is truly tired.

18.8K damage—an Ezreal rivaling the combined output of FNC’s two carries—was Uzi’s final curtain call at S9. It may also have been Uzi’s last tenderness toward RNG, or perhaps toward League of Legends itself.

All along he had carried the dreams of countless Chinese fans on his shoulders, walking alone down a road of thorns and flowers. But a flower may bloom again; a man has no second youth. This chubby kid with the crown of ‘Uzi’ on his head had in truth reached his limit long ago—he simply refused to believe in fate, and wanted to use those hands, the hands of an AD prodigy sprung from nowhere, to win fair and square a world championship that truly belonged to an ‘all-Chinese roster’. Before RNG’s blade broke at S8, how many of us had been moved to tears by the cry of ‘Five Chinese players, and victory is certain’?

In years past, when Uzi lost at Worlds, his moods would come unmoored. He would sit in his chair without a word, those stubborn single-lidded eyes filled with the anger and refusal of ‘I do not accept defeat’—and then he would forge that stubbornness into one impossible play after another on the stages to come, beginning the climb toward the highest honor all over again.

But today, Uzi did nothing and said nothing. He simply packed up his equipment as usual and readied himself for the flight home. This time, I could not find the stubbornness in his eyes.

From that instant, a fierce unease began hammering at my heart. Jian Zihao might be about to retire.

I imagined him returning to the hotel with all that weariness and despair, simply emptying himself, lying face-up on the bed—what would he be thinking?

The shining moments of the past would flash before his eyes, scene by scene. He would think of all those signature plays danced out on the point of a knife: the assassin’s Vayne that dove the back line at S3; the Vayne at S5 that fought four alone for an improbable pentakill; the Kai’Sa at MSI 2018 that defied fate itself, fleeing on a backward ultimate; the Sivir of 2019 in Korean-server Challenger ranked, an unofficial pentakill under the tower at seven minutes… Those moments must have been happy ones.

Then, the match just ended. After seven years of glory and disgrace, of rising and falling, the first thing he would choose to do is surely to go over the mistakes in his three games of Ezreal—he long ago stopped being the willful child who lashed out. He would concentrate, staring fixedly at the ceiling lamp of the hotel room, never blinking once.

And at last, however little he wished to revisit them, the great defeats would surface in his mind all the same…

In 2013, at the S3 final, dressed all in blue, he took off his headset with a kind of helplessness and gazed with longing at the genius mid laner under the spotlight, Lee Sang-hyeok. But he was only seventeen, and already runner-up in the world; the delight still outweighed the loss.

At S4 he fell, agonizingly, to a Samsung of dominating strength. He had reached the final twice by then, and his hunger for the title was beyond all measure; he sat staring blankly from his seat at the jubilant silhouettes of Samsung White lifting the trophy, and must have been swearing to himself, silently, that one day he would take back the world champion’s cup, the emblem of the game’s highest honor.

In the S7 semifinal, representing the LPL, the league of mainland China, he faced an SKT that carried itself as if no one alive could touch it—in Shanghai, that capital of esports; and in the end, the dream still shattered beneath the vast twin wings of Faker’s Galio.

And last of all… the night of S8’s Waterloo—counting back, exactly one full year ago today. He would close his eyes briefly, letting those bloodshot eyes rest a moment; he would not want to let himself recall that blacked-out stretch of memory. It was the fall of a star: the face of an entire region turned, in an instant, into the target of a carnival of online abuse, as swarms of haters conjured up for the occasion poured their most venomous words over him.

He knew he had once again shot up Weibo’s trending list like a rocket, but right now he wanted not the slightest contact with the outside world.

So, let us give him a little time—can we do that? Beyond any doubt, Jian Zihao is an outstanding player destined for the annals of esports, and a lighthouse by which countless people steer. Since we were born human, let us treat this lighthouse standing amid the towering waves with gentleness.

Jian Zihao—next year, will we still see that AD carry under the ID ‘RNG Uzi’ on the professional stage, honors beyond counting to his name, sweeping all before him once more?

Uzi has said he does not like playing Jhin, because a curtain call like this one can hardly be called perfect. Fang Yue wrote: ‘Of ten things in life, eight or nine go amiss; of these, scarcely two or three can be told.’ I have wearied of such maxims and had my fill of their thin comfort. I only hope that Uzi, a player of historic rank—if he truly must leave this dazzling stage in such a fashion—will keep, always, that calm, unforced ease with which he laughs at himself as ‘Brother Zaozi’.

Because you are, truly, already a legend.