Zhuo “Knight” Ding is, quite simply, one of the most mechanically skilled mid laners I’ve ever seen. And, at the head of Billibilli Gaming’s (BLG) roster, he’s leading the charge for the second-seed LPL team once more unto the anvil of battle, the fires of war. Hotspawn sat down with Knight to chat about his travels, his tournament, and more.
BLG Knight wants the T1 matchup
Nick: We’ll start off pretty simply. I’m from Vancouver, this is my hometown.
How have you been enjoying your time here? Have you done anything fun? How are you liking the city?
Knight: Because we have been there for only a few days, we haven’t had much time to do some city walking or walking around the city. But I must say, for Vancouver, the daytime is super long. It feels like there’s no night here. And I must say the food, the local food here, is quite good, especially for the steak. I enjoyed it.
Nick: Well, yeah, you’re lucky to come in summer. It gets late very fast during the winter; it can be dark at like 3:00. Just looking back on the past split, what was a moment, a play, just something that made Knight realize what the team had to offer, how far they could go?
What was the moment, or just a moment from the split, where you realized the potential that this roster had to really punch up at internationals?
Knight: I must say maybe the moment after getting the victory with the 3-0 victory against Top Esports in the playoff, because definitely Top Esports is a super strong team. They ended up as the top seed for the original split, but after that, we’re able to just stomp them. So after that, we feel like BLG, this roster, we’ve got the potential.
Nick: It was a very impressive series against TES. So my next question is just looking at the other teams from other regions here.
Is there anybody that you’d really like to get the chance to play, whether that’s a player or a team?
Knight: I like to face off against T1 on stage, definitely T1, very good team. They always play super aggressively, so I like to say it must be a very fun best of five if we’ll be able to get the chance to face off that team, yeah.
Nick: So the next question has absolutely nothing to do with pro play. Have you seen Arcane?
Knight: Yeah.
If you were in charge of the next animated show, which characters, which champions would he want to see get their own show and why?
Knight: I like to say Ahri because I really enjoy playing with this champion, so I like to know more about Ahri’s story.
Nick: The next one is a little bit related. As we can see right there, Riot is doing these themed seasons now. We went to Noxus, we went to Ionia. If you could pick a theme for a season, it doesn’t have to be like a region of the world. It could be his favourite skin line. Riot says it could be skin line, so Project, High Noon, whatever.
If you could choose a make a theme to makeover Summoner’s Rift, do all the skins, the mini games, the comics, and all that, what would you pick?
Knight: I like to say maybe Ionia.
Nick: Oh, so you’re already getting what you want, perfect.
Knight: Because so many champions around that feel, I feel like I’m just very interested in those champions. So yeah, that could be good.
Nick: The big news this year for Lol Esports was Fearless [Draft] was introduced. It was meant to be one split, now it’s all of Worlds, MSI, etc. How have you been enjoying Fearless, and now that you’re at sort of the first big regular event that happened that was established before Fearless,
How do you feel going into it about the format?
Knight: It feels like Fearless Draft is very interesting, and we started this new format from this year. You really need to have an even deeper champion pool in order to make a very good adaptation into the Fearless draft. And also, this is my first time playing in international tournaments with Fearless Draft, so I kind of enjoyed it. And also, I like to just know more about what other pro players played in the Fearless Draft and learn more from them.
Nick: You’ve looked really good at this split. Do you think Fearless plays into your strength as a player? Because you’ve always struck me as somebody who’s very versatile, very able to adapt.
Do you feel like you’re able to get advantages that weren’t available in traditional draft because of your creativity in this format?
Knight: I don’t feel it counts like the advantage for me, but still, it feels like there’s no influence for me compared to the traditional draft. And I must say most of the mid laners, which is all of us, have a very deep champion pool, yes. So yeah, we can have so many different champions played on stage. So not much influence.
Do you have anything you want to say to fans, to another player in the tournament, to whoever?
Knight: So the words for the fans, [I] really appreciate for all the support. Thank you so much. We’re going to just try our best, and also for other players. Hopefully, we can just, no matter who we’re going to face off against, hopefully we can have a very exciting match. Hopefully, we can just showcase a better performance.
Nick: Thank you so much, Knight. Very nice to meet you.
