League of Legends Veteran Refused Handshake After LCS Match

After their win over Team Liquid Honda, veteran Jesper "Zven" Svenningsen refused to shake hands with Sean "Yeon" Sung. This caused a huge stir in the NA community, but was Zven right not to shake the other player's hand after the match?

Zven LCS 2023
League of Legends: Was Zven right not to shake hands? | © Riot Games

Drama in the LCS. After the final match of the first round-robin of the LCS Spring Split 2023, veteran player Zven, who switched from ADC to support in 2022, was seen not shaking hands with rookie bot laner Yeon from Team Liquid and spouting some choice words.

Why did Zven refuse the handshake though and was he in the right? Let's summarize the most recent LCS on-air drama.

LoL: In-Game Banter Turns Serious

Cloud9 beat Team Liquid to take second place, alongside Evil Geniuses, halfway through the LCS split. At the end of the game, as C9 were going to high five their opponents in a sign of sportsmanship, all eyes landed on support player Zven who had some choice words for Yeon and also ignored his hand for a handshake.

Okay, but is ShowMaker right about this one?

Travis Gafford, esports journalist and content creator, held an interview with Zven after the incident, asking about the situation. Zven claimed that during the game Yeon had typed "worse than our Academy team" in all chat after he won a team fight, which had riled the support player up.

Zven even tweeted out his side of the story giving more context to the situation. He even went as far as to apologize for his actions, even going as far as to thank Yeon and Team Liquid for firing him up and making the match more exciting.

I didn’t shake his hand after the match because he called us “worse than our academy team” after they won the team fight at drake. In the game I thought it was distasteful to talk shit after they won the fight but in hindsight I think I was a bit out of line as well. So I’d like to apologize to TL and Yeon and thank them for firing me up, made the match more exciting

Fans didn't think that either player was in the wrong and some have even stated that they'd like to see more emotions and players get fired up during their games like Zven did.

Yeon also responded to Zven on Twitter, explaining that the other had nothing to apologize for and that he was merely doing something that is part of the game, "to me, it’s just in game I see somebody fire one at my mid laner, and I’ll fire one back and then instant mute you."

It seems that the banter in all-chat began when C9's mid laner Dimitri “Diplex” Ponomarev won his laning phase and typed "xDDDDD" which is what Yeon was referring to in his tweet.

Hopefully this rivalry will continue into the second half of the LCS split which is going to kick off on Thursday, February 23 at 2:00 pm PT (5:00 pm ET) with the number one seed FlyQuest taking on 100 Thieves.

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Sabrina Ahn

Sabrina Ahn is the League of Legends and Riftfeed Lead. During her time at Concordia University in 2014 she fell in love with LoL and is playing it since – how she hasn't lost her sanity is still unclear....