With a spot in the quarterfinals at the League of Legends World Championships on the line, Royal Never Give Up defeated North America's top seed, Team SoloMid, to eliminate the favored League Championship Series side and move on to the knockout stage in Chicago next week.
In a matchup of two of the best ADCs in the world, Jian "Uzi" Zi-hao of RNG came out well ahead of Yiliang "Doublelift" Peng. Uzi selected Ezreal and finished with a final scoreline of 10/2/8, pressuring the TSM bottom lane early and picking up all three kills when his team collapsed on the North American squad while the bot lane duo attempted to contest a ward. He continued to carry his team, providing overwhelming damage and team fight presence. Uzi finished with nearly half of his team's damage, carrying his side to the quarterfinals.
Team SoloMid almost made a comeback after a huge early deficit, as a team fight at the bot lane inhibitor led to an ace for the NA LCS squad, but RNG would come back from the fountain and pick off Dennis "Svenskeren" Johnsen and remove his potential to contest Baron Nashor from the map. That led to another Baron buff and one last team fight, which went in favor of the Chinese side and ended with a destroyed nexus.
The victory means RNG advances as the second seed from its group, while Team SoloMid is eliminated. RNG is the second Chinese team in the quarterfinals -- joining EDward Gaming -- while both North American teams to finish the group stage so far have been eliminated. The remaining Chinese and North American teams will meet in Group B on the final day of groups on Sunday, as I May and Cloud9 compete with SK Telecom T1 and Flash Wolves for the last two spots in the round of eight.