Why has Profit Never been a part of the OWWC?

Junyoung ‘Profit’ Park has been called the Greatest of all Time by many people in the community. From being the first player to reach 5k final blows and 10,000 eliminations to being the MVP of the first inaugural Overwatch League season. Profit has proven himself many times over. One achievement that Profit has never been a part of is as an Overwatch World Cup Member. Here is a look at why Profit wasn’t a part of the Overwatch World Cup team so far.

2016

In 2016 was the first iterations of the Overwatch World Cup. The process was way different from what fans know now with the selection of players. It was a fan vote that selected a few of the members. The captain, who was the player with the most votes, then got to pick the remaining spots on the team. For South Korea the captain was Wonhyeop ‘Arhan’ Jeong. The most influential person he brought in was Taeyeong ‘Tairong’ Kim. He may not have been the best main support, but he acted as the coach and manager for the team. That strategy aspect wasn’t as prevalent during that era and brought the team together.

Profit was not yet on the scene at this time. He would not have been able to be voted onto the team by fan votes. He was neither yet a big name in the APEX community that Arhan would have brought him on, as there was only one other DPS slot open seeing Arhan was a DPS player. This is before his time in the professional Overwatch community.

2017

This is the first year that Profit could have realistically gotten into the Overwatch World Cup team. The issue was that GCBusan was still making their way through their royal roading through the competition. At this point, Lunatic-Hai had gone back-to-back wins in seasons 2 and 3 of APEX. They were considered to be some of the best. Fans did not vote on the players that would be a part of the team, but instead the national committees that would help manage and create the teams. Daehoon ‘Runner’ Yoon, Kyu-hyung ‘YongBongTang’ Hwang, and Jungmin ‘themarine’ Kim all well-known names in the Korean esport community were picked.

Profit and GCBusan would win APEX Season 4 after the Overwatch World Cup would have been picked and the Katowice Qualifier finished. Profit won in October of 2017, but the qualifier was in August of the same year. The Overwatch World Cup then happened a month later, so that it was too late to have Profit integrated into the Overwatch World Cup at that time.

2018

2018 was the first year of the Overwatch League. Profit along with GCBusan had been picked up by C9 to represent the London Spitfire in the inaugural season. Ironically the issue from the previous year was also the same for Profit. The London Spitfire were not a favorite team to win the first season of the Overwatch League. They were a good team, but not the best until the playoffs. At the end of July 2018 was when the Overwatch League Playoffs where Profit and the rest of the London Spitfire were just starting to warm up after looking like they were going to have an early exit out of the playoffs.

Though from 2016 to 2017 the format of the Overwatch World Cup has changed quite a bit, but the 2018 World Cup stayed mostly the same. The fans voted for the national committee and not the players. Though Profit was a fan favorite, it was up to the committee to offer tryouts as well as craft the Overwatch World Cup team. This means with Profit not had yet hit his playoff peak, that during the player tryouts, Profit may not have been the number one pick for a DPS for the lineup.

2019

#IplaytoWIN

선발전을 통해 추려진 오버워치 월드컵 한국팀🇰🇷의
12인 로스터를 공개합니다.

🛡Mano 🛡Choihyobin 🛡Jjanu

⚔Architect ⚔Carpe ⚔Decay ⚔Haksal ⚔Nenne

💉Anamo 💉Bdosin 💉IDK 💉Kariv

12인의 선수분들에게 많은 응원 부탁드립니다.

감사합니다. pic.twitter.com/UPZLU0XzQy

— OWWC Team Korea (@OwwcKoreaTeam) July 26, 2019

In 2019 is the team that would make the most sense for Profit to be a part of. It is known that many players such as Junho ‘Fury’ Kim, Sunghyeon ‘Jjonak’ Bang, and Jaehui ‘Gesture’ Hong passed on the OWWC team. Let us assume that Profit did not pass up the opportunity for the argument of this year.

Daehee ‘Crusty’ Park picked Hyojong ‘Haksal’ Kim who would be in the same position as Profit because he valued Haksal’s vocal nature as well as his leadership to take the initiative. Minho ‘Architect’ Park was also an option as well as Byungsun ‘Fleta’ Kim. These three players were big competition for Profit. Crusty was the coach and a large part of putting his team together. He favored different aspects that Haksal and Architect fit the best with the meta in his opinion and his coaching style.

The meta was a double shield with a variety of DPS heroes that were played. Pharah, Reaper, Mei, Tracer, Window, which are all heroes that Profit is great on. This was a personal preference of what the national committee thought was going to be the best. Profit was not in that lineup, though he could have turned down the opportunity.

Profit and the OWWC

This is a bad fate between Profit and Overwatch World Cup. With Covid-19 in 2020 and the 2021 Blizzcons, it does not look like they will have/had the Overwatch World Cup. Those four years, three of which South Korea had won, might have been all the community gets. Profit who is considered one of the greatest of all times will possibly never get this title under his belt. It is a shame that, because of timing, he has never had the opportunity to be on the South Korean National team. The community can only hope that Blizzard will bring back the Overwatch World Cup someday so that Profit will have his chance to check off this achievement as well.

Follow The Game Haus for more sports and esports coverage:

Twitter: TGH Esports
Facebook: The Game Haus

For more high-quality esports analysis and memes, check out Lauren’s Twitter, @Daebakowl

“From Our Haus to Yours”