On June 3rd, 2020, Chinese esports player Uzi, or Jian Zihao, declared his retirement due to “chronic injuries” related to his arms and shoulder, as well as diabetes. He was 23 years old at that time. He retired from Royal Never Give Up (RNG), the same organization with which he began his professional career in 2012.
Uzi was one of the greatest ADCs of LPL. He announced his return earlier on December 15th, with a social media post “I’m back! (In Chinese)” on Twitter-like platform Weibo. In the meantime, Bilibili Gaming (BLG) also stated his official return and released the new roster for the 2022 season.
BLG’s lineup includes top laner Breathe (Chen Chen), jungler Weiwei (Wei Bohan), mid laner FoFo (Zhu Junlan), bot laners Uzi and Doggo (Qiu Ziquan), as well as support Crisp (Liu Qingsong).
Shortly after Uzi’s announcement of return, the topic #Uzi# took first place on Weibo’s trending topic ranking. His post mentioned above received over 67k comments at press time.
The official poster on Uzi’s return by BLG.
Uzi’s Weibo post on December 15th said: “I’m back!” https://weibo.com/5444117278/L69Kvqooa?type=comment
Uzi is renowned for his mechanical prowess on champions such as Vayne, Kai'Sa, Ezreal, and Kog'Maw. He carried his previous team RNG to two consecutive second-place finishes at the LOL World Championship in 2013 and 2014.
LPL has the rule that players can only return from retirement after one full year. During his break, Uzi founded an esports team for League of Legends: Wild Rift, the mobile version of LOL.
Although his new teammates at BLG expressed their excitement to play with the veteran gamer in a recent documentary, Uzi’s performance and the road to the Worlds remain uncertain as it has been a long time since his last public competition.