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How G2's Mikyx bounced back from his wrist injury to shine at MSI and LEC
From a career-ending injury to winning MSI, Mikyx shares his secret to recovery.
G2 made history earlier this year as they became the first ever European team to win the League of Legends Mid Season Invitational. Now, after a short break, the team returned to Summoner’s Rift as LEC Summer Split kicked off.
While the MSI final may have been a breeze for G2, the fastest final in the tournament’s history in fact, getting that far was anything but smooth – especially for support Mihael 'Mikyx' Mehle, who suffered a debilitating wrist injury towards the end of the Spring Split that severely limited his play-time and put his participation at the LEC finals in doubt. The 20-year-old admitted that he instantly feared the worst.
Mikyx feared the worst when he picked up his wrist injury
© Lol Esports
“I mean, my first thought was how much longer am I going to be able to keep playing?" He told us.
"That kind of injury can be career threatening. I was scared that I was going to make it worse so I was trying to not do too much stuff with my hands.”
G2 began to play with their substitute support Hampus “Promisq” Abrahamsson for the majority of scrims, while Mikyx played little to no solo-queue in both Europe and Korea when the team was bootcamping in preparation of the international tournament.
Yet, not only was Mikyx able to play in all of his team’s games in LEC finals and at MSI but he performed magnificently. Apparently, the secret is watching others.
The G2 Support played an integral part of the team's MSI victory
© Lol Esports
“I was trying to watch as much gameplay as possible so I was watching others play solo-queue, I was watching their scrims, I was watching VODs of the opponents we were about to play. I couldn't do it all the time because it got a bit too much but luckily my teammates were very supportive, so we had a lot of team activities like watching movies and going out to eat. I've had to spectate scrims as much as possible even though I missed half of them because I had appointments and stuff in Korea.
“Luckily I could scrim like two days before MSI so I could try some match-ups that I wanted to try because I never played Nautilus in the past few months, he was kinda new. So I was just trying match-ups, asking around and then Perkz told me what was OP and I just played it and that was it.”
Now with very little if any pain in his wrist, Mikyx credits his recovery to a book recommended by a fan on Twitter.
“I honestly didn't believe that it would work but I was kinda desperate so I thought I might as well try it. It was basically about stress and emotion causing physical pain. I could relate to it and it's more prevalent in certain personality types which I could relate too as well.
“There was something I had to do every night and morning, like reflect on the past or present of an event that influenced my emotions negatively but I didn't express it, I just felt it. After reflecting on it, it kinda got better I don't know how it works but I guess our brains are just really crazy. Somehow, I'm not feeling any pain and it's pretty good right now.”
Free from pain, Mikyx stood at as the best performing support at the tournament but admitted he was disappointed with the bot-lanes at MSI when comparing them to who he faced at Worlds 2016, though admitted that could be partially due to his own improvement.
Mikyx was underwhelmed by CoreJJ's performance at the MSI final
© Lol Esports
“I was really bad in 2016. That was the first split I played and I went to Worlds and played all these bot-lanes like Uzi and Mata, Deft and Meiko, PraY and Gorilla. I learned a lot from them and I remember talking to Gorilla as well at a bootcamp and this guy was so smart. I had no idea how these match-ups worked and he taught me everything, like I had no idea how to play Nami or Karma.
“But this year, I was watching scrims where Promisq was playing, he and Perkz were actually smurfing. Any bot-lane they were against I was like what are they doing, they're so bad. I thought maybe they would be better on stage than in scrims but I wasn't that impressed. I think Baolan did better on stage than in scrims but against TL in the semi-finals he was also playing more like scrims.
“I kinda got let down by Corejj, he was really hyped up as the MVP and was kinda smurfing against IG but all the games against us he didn't really perform that well. Mata especially let me down too, when I played against him and Uzi in 2016 he was really good but maybe it was all Uzi. I think Mata has gotten worse, he was really underwhelming. I'm looking forward to Worlds, hopefully I get to play the Griffin bot-lane and some of the Chinese bot-lanes – I value Uzi and Ming highly so I want to play them because apparently they're really insane.”
