The rise of KOO Tigers as a 2015 Worlds finalist is a true underdog story. This was a team patched together from literal rejects from Najin and IM after the LCK consolidated to a single team per organization at the end of 2014. Their ADC PraY had been without a team for a half a year after he was kicked from Najin due to under-performing. People thought that this Frankenstein team full of washed-up and mediocre players would go nowhere, even as they qualified to LCK 2015 in a breeze.
But in Spring 2015, the Tigers dominated. They were easily the best team in Korea despite their tendency to fall behind for the first 20 minutes of the game. But when that moment hit, it was like they flipped a switch and they would trample over their opponents. It was near-magical that this rookie team was sitting on top of one of the most competitive regions in LoL.
Then, IEM Katowice hit. And the Tigers lost. In a best of three, to the worst team in the LPL.
It was a national embarrassment and amount of hate that the Tigers received online was staggering. Being told to swim back home from Poland was one of the milder sentiments found on online forums. Even worse, it was as if that loss sapped all of the Tigers' magic. They went from being best in the league to dropping matches, floundering in the Cinderhulk meta. They were swept in an embarrassing fashion by an ascendant SKT 3-0 in the finals of the LCK spring playoffs.
In the Summer, the Tigers looked like a shell of their former selves, a middling team at best. They somehow held on long enough to scrape together a spot in the summer playoffs and in one last desperate push defeated Najin and CJ to secure 3rd place before falling to KT. Thanks to the efforts of SKT claiming victory over KT, they qualified to Worlds as second seed due to their accumulated circuit points, but was widely regarded as a worse team than KT, who qualified through the gauntlet.
When the KOO Tigers dropped two matches to the Flash Wolves (the second seed from LMS!) and failed to qualify as first seed from what was considered the easiest group at Worlds, everyone shook their fingers and berated them, proclaiming they weren't surprised, how they expected that the Tigers, the infamous international chokers, would fail to deliver at Worlds.
The Tigers were then drawn against KT in the quarter finals and everyone told them that they had a good run as a rookie team, but they would fall to the better Korean team, taking one game off them at best. When KT took game 1, it was merely the expected result and would the KOO Tigers be swept 3-0? But then the Tigers won the next game. And the next. And the next.
"Well," they said. "That was unexpected and what a shame KT under-performed! KT would have been a better stylistic match-up against Fnatic and now surely KOO will fall to the better team. Maybe they will make it closer this time, but even if the Tigers somehow manage to win, it will be a 5 game series."
KOO wins 3-0.
And now, people are saying it again. KOO is 0-8 against SKT in their 8 most recent games. Surely, they will fall to the undefeated giants of Worlds. Surely, this team of has-beens, underestimated by everyone since their colossal embarrassment at IEM, will finally show their true colours and kneel before the best team in the world.
Or maybe not.
