Doublelift blocked from joining Team Liquid in off-season: Story So Far

North American veteran Yiliang “Doublelift” Peter Peng has rocked the League of Legends scene once again with a new revelation – he was blocked from re-joining Team Liquid in this recent off-season. As was reported, Doublelift retired once again during the off-season, citing lack of monetary and competitive incentive as a reason to end his competitive career. He shifted instead back into streaming.

Dodo Didn’t Want Him

On his stream, Doublelift finally opened up on his reason for not joining Team Liquid’s League of Legends roster after leaving 100 Thieves. According to Peng, Team Liquid’s current general manager and assistant coach Kang “Dodo” Jun-hyeok did not want the ADC on the roster, citing:

“He said: if Doublelift joins the team, I am going to have to quit my job, or they are going to have to fire me. – recalled Doublelift on-stream.”

Initially, co-owner Steve Arhancet allegedly reached out to Peng during the off-season, according to the former. Steve was looking to rebuild the Liquid roster and was seeking Peng’s help in doing so. According to Peng’s testimony, he had outlined the talents that he would want if he was to continue competing, creating an NA super team comprised of the team’s top talents.

This lineup most notably included Joseph Joon “Jojopyun” Pyun, whom Peng wanted to play with. However, after weeks of talks, including Doublelift reaching out to tentatively see where Jojopyun was himself inclined towards, Liquid had still yet to make a move on Jojopyun, leaving Peng confused as to Liquid’s motivation.

When at last Dodo had a call with Jojopyun, the latter asked on Doublelift as he had not been mentioned during the talks. Dodo was cited as having said that the only way Doublelift were to join Liquid were if Dodo left or was fired, implying that there was no love lost between the two or at least from Dodo’s side.

Dodo Responds

Swiftly after this went viral, Dodo responded, claiming that Doublelift had decided to share wrong information. He claimed that he had in fact been in talks with Jojopyun since September, having had 6-7 conversations with him. Ultimately, he said, Jojopyun decided to go with Cloud9 as playing with Berserker was his main priority. Doublelift, he said, only wanted Jojopyun and as such, it did not work out.

He also claimed maximum transparency between himself and Steve, stating that Doublelift was sharing misinformation on how it went down.

Liquid ended up going with another Korean core, retaining three of their talents and bringing on two more Koreans including Jeong “Impact” Eon-young and Eom “UmTi” Seong-hyeon. A far cry from the ‘Exodia’ team that Doublelift planned for Liquid.

Dodo's official response to Doublelift here. 

Doublelift calls out Dodo

In a final response to Dodo’s response, Doublelift called out Dodo for his two-facedness, stating that despite his official response, the general manager had reached out to Peng shortly after the initial rumour broke months ago that Dodo had blocked Peng’s move to apologize.

“Hey Peter, I heard from Steve that you heard my conversation with Jojopyun regarding you in the past few days. I want to apologize to you. Those conversations were definitely not professional, and I feel very bad about talking like that behind your back. It was in the jist of the moment where jojo reached out to me worried that we were going for you instead of berserker, and I acted in a way to convince jojo at that moment. But still, I shouldn’t have said something like that and I’m really sorry. I still very much respect you as a player and as a friend. Sorry.” -screencapture of Dodo’s message to Doublelift.

All sources cited from Doublelift's stream and official screencaptures of messages.

Featured Image Credit: LoL Esports

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