MadLife retires


(Image Credit: Adringamer

According to InvenGlobal, the original support god himself is retiring from professional League of Legends. But he isn't soon to be forgotten.

Hong "MadLife" Min-gi began his career playing with MiG Frost, a team that would get renamed and re-sponsored into CJ Entus.

With this team, Madlife would spend the next five years of his life building up his reputation as one of the best skill-shot oriented supports in the world, impressing endlessly with hooks of all kinds. With champions like Blitzcrank and Thresh, Made like made prediction plays with blinding accuracy that became his very own namesake with players describing any good Thresh play as "Madlife," most especially predictive hooks on champions that blink or flash away catching them at their destination.

His skill proved itself useful on the competitive scene early on, and for the first few years of his career, he and MiG Frost would play as a top tier team in the LCK, taking home the first place title in the 2012 LCK summer split, and coming in second at Worlds the very same year. Madlife would be one of the most feared supports in the game.

Things were good with CJ Entus after the change, but as the years went on, the team began to falter. Over time, their average performances dipped, and what was once a team fighting for first became a team fighting for a spot in the top four.  This downward trend continued all the way into the 2016 summer split when CJ Entus was finally relegated from the LCK.

Madlife would play one more off-season tournament with the team before moving to North America to play with Gold Coin United in the NA CS. Despite dominating with his new American team, coming first in both of 2017's split playoffs, Gold Coin failed twice to qualify for the NA LCS promotion that Madlife so obviously wanted. 

From there, he announced that he would be taking a break from the 2018 spring split to focus on streaming for his fans. That break has now turned into an outright retirement. 

While the end of his legacy was one of difficulty in North America, the beginning of his legacy, the play that he showed in Korea, will be how Madlife is remembered. Not just because of how he dominated the early LCK days, but because of how he took the support role in League of Legends and pioneered it into the play-making power multiplier we see living on today through the likes of Aphromoo and Olleh.

He didn't just dominate the bot lane, he helped shape it.

Best of luck to the living legend, who will undoubtedly live on with every great Thresh and Blitzcrank play that is referenced back to the feared name, and perhaps some streams for fans. 

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