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GINX TV > News > League of Legends

World champions Damwon Gaming sign legendary coach kkOma

The greatest coach League of Legends has ever seen joined forces with the 2020 World Champions in hopes of returning to former glory. In the process, he’ll have to face off against his old team: SK Telecom T1.
By Andrew Kim | 
First Published November 13, 2020, 07:20
World champions Damwon Gaming sign legendary coach kkOma

Just an hour after T1 announced the signing of former Damwon coaching staff members Daeny and Zefa, Damwon Gaming announced that three-time world champion coach Kim “kkOma” Jeong-gyun would be joining DWG to “continue to create the success story of Damwon Gaming.” 

Damwon, who are coming off the back of a Worlds championship win, signed the legendary coach after his year on LPL’s Vici Gaming, where he raised the team from a 2nd-last placement in the 2019 Summer Split to 9th in the 2020 Spring Split.

Before that, kkOma built a career as a coach on SK Telecom T1 and brought them to 3 World Championship victories, 2 MSI Trophies, 8 LCK Championships over the course of seven years. No other coach comes remotely close to that level of success.

kkOma left Vici in September as he wished to return to Korea to spend time with his family, as he is an expecting father. The prevailing thought was a return to T1 or taking a step back from coaching was on the cards, but few would have expected him to go to a different LCK team entirely. 

 

With this signing, Damwon Gaming and T1 now set up perhaps the greatest storyline since the rise of Griffin in 2019 and the GE/ROX Tigers in 2015 and 2016.

It is the story of the most prestigious coach in League of Legends history seeking to take down the team he raised to become the most renowned team in the esport. In particular, it’s kkOma versus Faker: the undisputed greatest coach of all time against his protege, the undisputed greatest player of all time. 

It doesn’t end there. For Zefa, it is a chance for him to rival kkOma and show that he’s the new face of League of Legends coaching. Last time he was on T1, the team’s season ended with a 3-1 Worlds semifinal loss to G2 Esports. Fresh off of winning this year’s edition of the tournament, he seeks to take down the very team he just led to international acclaim. 

These two titans of the LCK will battle for the first time in the 2021 LCK Spring Split, the first year where the LCK will be franchised. Even before then, the players of these two teams will be showing off their skills at the 2020 All-Star Event, where Faker, Canna, Canyon, and BeryL look set to attend.