Get PremiumFor most of the LPL Split 2 2026 regular season, no one was paying attention to Team WE
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Who is Monki, the main architect behind Team WE's underdog story?
For most of the LPL Split 2 2026 regular season, no one was paying attention to Team WE
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His individual peaks against the LPL's most respected junglers have been striking. Against BLG's Peng "Xun" Li-xun and Anyone's Legend's Lee "Tarzan" Seung-yong — arguably two of the most reputed names at the position in China in recent years, both built on aggression and instinct — Monki did not just hold his own. He outpaced both individually while shotcalling the rest of his roster.
Monki's run is also a personal redemption arc. Earlier in Split 2, with WE sitting at 0-5 in series and 0-10 in maps, he was benched for two BO3s in favour of Peng "Tyrion" Jun-Bin. WE lost both. When he returned to the starting lineup, the team began stealing maps off top teams and eventually claimed their first and only regular-season BO3 win — against Invictus Gaming.
In a post-AL series interview for Chinese outlet Esports Focus, Monki explained what had broken inside the locker room before that bench stint, and what he changed after it:
"Before coming back from the bench, my relationships with everyone on the team were broken. I felt like we could win but I was upset that they didn't listen to my shotcalling, which led to terrible relationships among us during that time. After taking a break, I thought a lot about it. I still believed that I can lead the team to victory but I hope everyone can listen to me. Maybe my previous approach was wrong. I apologized to everyone and we talked through it. They were willing to trust me again.
As we started winning games, the trust grew stronger, to the point that my teammates basically execute whatever my shotcalls may be.
That rebuilt trust is exactly what head coach Jin "JinJin" Guang-Hua now describes as WE's identity. "Monki's macro is probably the best I've ever seen from a jungler," JinJin said after the AL series. "When Erha is serving Monki, the team just doesn't make mistakes."
Shi "Erha" Xu-Ye, the young support of WE, was equally direct:
Monki has a lot of ideas, and I follow most of his choices.
In draft, what makes Monki stand out is his versatility. He has shown across the playoffs that he can play any meta jungler, but the version of Monki that stood out the most is the aggressive, carry-oriented one — Nidalee, Naafiri, and similar self-sufficient picks where his shotcalling, individual plays' agency and mechanical pressure compound.
Beyond his individual play, the wider observation about Team WE in this playoff run is how dramatically their macro and early-game discipline have improved. They now consistently secure early leads, even against the league's top sides — and the player driving those decisions on the map, every minute of every game, is Monki himself.
This is only Monki's second year in the LPL, his fifth competitive year overall. He came up through EDward Gaming's academy in the LDL — the Chinese second-tier circuit — and in his very first season in 2022, he won the Asia Star Challengers Invitational, the regional equivalent of the EMEA Masters that crowns the best tier-two team in Asia. He then claimed the Esports Shanghai Masters in late 2023 with EDG before finally making the jump to LPL play in 2024. After a difficult first split on the main stage (16th), he moved to Team WE for 2025 and carried the side to a top-four finish in Split 2 last year, his first real proof that he could hang with the league's better teams given the right context.
But no one expected this to be the first step towards something bigger. Sitting at a guaranteed top-three finish this split and on the doorstep of an MSI berth, Monki is no longer a promising LPL jungler. He is the centrepiece of one of the most improbable playoff runs the league has ever produced.
His ascent matters for another reason. The LPL has long produced a deep talent pool at the jungle position, but in recent years, several of its most promising young names have seen their careers derailed by scandals rather than on-Rift performance — match-fixing allegations against naiyou earlier this year, Milkyway at the end of 2025, and Bo
WE face Top Esports on June 7 for a place in the LPL grand final and at MSI. To anyone still tempted to write off this run as a streak of variance, Monki himself offered the cleanest rebuttal after the AL sweep: "Luck can't win you games." One thing is certain: if he carries WE all the way to their first international appearance in nine years, the question will stop being who he is — and start being how far he can go.