Royal Never Give Up have won the 2022 Mid-Season Invitational after a hard-fought five-game series against LCK's T1. The Chinese side are now back-to-back MSI champions with third title overall, making them record-holders for that tournament. 

T1 entered MSI as early favorites but questionable drafts throughout the tournament calmed expectations a bit, even when Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok and Ryu "Keria" Min-seok played to their absolute best. In the grand final itself, T1 and RNG traded the first four games, but the LPL champions looked much cleaner in their wins, even when facing T1's famed early-game strength.

Throughout the series, T1 struggled to shut down RNG's jungle Yan "Wei" Yang-Wei, both in-game and in-draft, who put out an MVP-esque performance in the final. Chen "Bin" Ze-Bin on Gwen was also a tough obstacle for T1 to deal with it, so when the game reached RNG just looked like the overall stronger team. This showed very clearly in game 5, as RNG put on the pressure from the very start of the clock, making the closing bout of the series particularly one-sided. 

As confetti rained over the half-empty Busan stage, celebrating RNG who competed from their headquarters in China due to travel restrictions, Chinese League of Legends celebrates yet another instance of domination over international tournaments. LPL teams have now won six of the last eight international events, continuing the Chinese era of hegemony in the world's most popular esport.