OWL Team Head confesses to causing historic Shanghai Dragons technicality win
In the wake of the news about the uncertain future of the Overwatch League and the game's esports scene, tongues have gotten looser and industry secrets have been bubbling to the surface.
President of Esports of the Florida Mayhem, Albert Yeh revealed that he had an instrumental part in the Shanghai Dragons ending one of the longest losing streaks in professional sports history, winning against the Boston Uprising in 2019 after 42 consecutive matches without a victory.
Last minute technicality
Throughout the entire 40-game-long inaugural season of the Overwatch League in 2018, the Shanghai Dragons had failed to win a single match, attracting the attention of esports and even sports enthusiasts around the world as being on one of the worst losing series in the history of professional competition.
At the start of the second season and with a rebuilt roster, the Dragons remained down on their luck as they also lost the first two matches.
In their third match of the season, the team was to play the Boston Uprising and their main tank rookie player Cameron "Fusions" Bosworth who had shown outstanding performances during his team’s season start.
Fusions was signed to a so-called “two-way contract”, a contract agreement the Overwatch League had created to allow developmental players to play both for a franchise’s academy team as well as the main team with certain restrictions.
In order to make sure that an organisation wouldn’t abuse the rule to dominate the developmental second-tier division, Overwatch Contenders, the league limited players who were signed onto two-way contracts to play a maximum number of two matches per stage in the Overwatch League.
At the time of the match against the Dragons, Fusions had already been fielded twice during the first stage, making him ineligible to play against the Dragons.
However, according to a report from VPEsports, the Overwatch League only recognised Fusions' ineligibility minutes before the player was expected to play on stage despite the teams having to file their full rosters for the first map hours in advance of the start of the match.
As a result, the admins pulled Fusions from the Uprising’s starting lineup. The team around the former President of Gaming for the Boston Uprising Chris “HuK” Loranger and the substitute player Park "Axxiom" Min-seob had to step in.
With little practice time and a less specialised skillset for the meta-juggernaut hero Reinhardt, who had been a mandatory pick for the GOATs comp throughout the second season of OWL, the Uprising consequently lost the match, handing the Dragons their first victory in franchise history.
OWL GM confesses to telling on the Uprising
Four years after the match, Albert Yeh shared on Twitter that he was the one to inform the League about the rule issue regarding Fusions shortly before the match, leading to the last-minute forced substitution.
He tweeted: “I may have rulebooked HuK back in 2019 when their starting MT in GOATs was on a two-way contract and had already played the 2 allotted OWL matches for that stage.
“This forced them to play their backup tank on zero practice and gifted Shanghai their first win.”
The Mayhem themselves have been on the receiving end of technicality rulings, with one of their last year’s map victories being retroactively replayed after the Mayhem had broken a rule against a Teleporter and Ice Wall boost exploit.
