Saigon Buffalo pick Malzahar at MSI 2022

Although Vietnam Championship representatives Saigon Buffalo have had a tough time during the 2022 Mid-Season Invitational rumble stage, the team continued to make new fans as they locked in Malzahar mid in their match against the League of Legends Pro League champions, Royal Never Give Up, at MSI 2022.

SGB mid laner Bùi “Froggy” Văn Minh Hải locked in the Malzahar pick in an attempt to get something going as the team came into their match against RNG winless across four games in the rumble stage. Froggy even blind picked the Malzahar before RNG showed their mid laner. In response, Li “Xiaohu” Yuan-Hao locked in Viktor.

There is not much data on the matchup. In fact, According to Gol.gg, there isn’t much data on Malzahar at all. Across all levels of pro play in 2022, Malzahar has only been picked 11 times before this match. Including picks and bans, Malzahar only had a 0.5% presence rate across all games.

Yet among those 11 games, Froggy actually had the most games on the champion among all players — two of them. He played it twice in the 2022 VCS spring season, spliting the games with one win and one loss. When it comes to the highest level of play, though, the last time anyone picked the champion before this game at MSI 2022 was Heo “ShowMaker” Su back in February during the 2022 LCK spring season. He did win that game, though.

In the first recorded matchup between Viktor and Malzahar in 2022, Froggy came up short. RNG beat SGB in 35-minutes, which actually lasted a lot longer than a typical SGB game. However, the blind pick did not work out, as Xiaohu on Viktor managed to go 4/1/5 and help lead RNG to victory. Froggy went 1/3/4 on Malzahar.

The loss put SGB at 0-5 to end the first of two round-robins in the MSI 2022 rumble stage. The team lost to every other team remaining in the tournament. However, the team still has five more chances at picking up wins and bringing out even spicier picks.