For many European League of Legends fans, Bwipo is one of the most memorable pro players in the scene, having played as an LEC starter for over four years before leaving for the LCS.
But during a recent co-stream of the 2023 Mid-Season Invitational, SK Gaming’s substitute jungler Erberk “Gilius” Demir explained the outlandish reason why Bwipo even got a chance to play on Fnatic’s starting roster.
Back in 2018, Fnatic was still running with Paul “sOAZ” Boyer as their starting top laner, all the way until the start of the Spring Playoffs, when he suddenly suffered a hand injury that sidelined him for an extended amount of time. Fans and fellow pro players offered messages of sympathy at the time, but according to Gilius, the veteran top laner actually injured himself.
Right before playoffs, Fnatic had supposedly finished a particularly frustrating set of matches against Team Vitality, where former top laner Lucas “Cabochard” Simon-Meslet was playing a ton of tough matchups into sOAZ with champions like Lucian and Jayce, while Gilius and mid laner Daniele “Jiizuke” di Mauro were constantly ganking the lane.
After the scrim set, sOAZ was so angry that he punched a table—but he ended up breaking his hand in the process. Bwipo supplemented the story by saying that although he wouldn’t be the one to tell the whole story, he acknowledged that the 2018 Vitality roster “did [him] a solid,” while IWDominate jokingly said that Vitality kickstarted Bwipo’s career.
After temporarily filling the top lane spot, the 24-year-old Belgian eventually took over the starting position from sOAZ, helped Fnatic reach the quarterfinals at MSI 2018, and even played well enough to reach the 2018 World Championship finals against Invictus Gaming. He would play another three years with Fnatic but would constantly fall short to G2 Esports in the LEC Finals.
