SSG Ian was impressed at how well M17 played.

On July 7th (HKT), LCK's MVP scored their first win in the group stage against Machi 17 in the first match of the second day in the Rift Rivals Red Rift. Joonhyung "Ian" Ahn and Kyusuk "Beyond" Kim was interviewed on air after the match for comments.

Although one match wasn't enough for Ian to say for sure, Ian was impressed at how M17 did in the Rift Rivals. "I can't say for sure after just one match, but I think their draft is very good. I was also nervous because they defeated OMG that we've lost against. They were just as good as we thought."

The early game invade went wrong and gave two kills to M17's Cassiopeia, but it wasn't as bad as Ian expected. "I tried my best to not get tilted. Although Cassiopeia scored two kills, the laning against her wasn’t too bad. I still needed to call jungler a few times, however."

Beyond chimed in about the invade in his interview as well. "We tried to invade their red camp, but it didn’t work out because I didn’t know that Ivern used Smite on raptors beforehand. Although we’ve failed our level 1 strategy, Max cheered us up and I promised to carry the game for us to not get tilted."

As for Beyond, he felt a bit down even after a win because he didn't play very well in the Rift Rivals. "Although we’ve won, I still feel a bit heavyhearted because I didn’t play that well. I thought we’d win all matches when we came here, but we made a lot of mistakes yesterday. I personally got feedback on my jungling routes, and we all got feedback on how we needed to make less mistakes. Also, I tried my best to minimize the mistakes as much as possible today."

Beyond wrapped up the interview with a promise that he'll do better going forward. "I’d like to thank the fans who always cheered for me, and I’m sorry for being unable to return that cheer with good performance. I'll try to get back in shape and show a good performance going forward."