Finnish StarCraft player Joona "Serral" Sotala became the first non-Korean to win the StarCraft II World Championship Series after defeating Kim "Stats" Dae Yeob in the best-of-seven grand finals at BlizzCon in Anaheim, California.
Zerg-player Serral went 3-0 ahead and the result seemed assured, but just as he looked to make it a clean sweep Stats, playing as Protoss, pulled the deficit back to 3-2. That was to be the end of this promising comeback, though, and Serral went on to take the next round and with it the World Championship.
After his win we grabbed a word with the new champ, and we asked him what it felt like to win it after so many years of Korean dominance. "Honestly, I don't like to think about it that way, I see everyone as a person. They are a champion, a champion's a champion." Although he did add that it "felt good" to make history.
"I think I had pretty good preparation," he told us when we asked him about his tactics going into the tournament. "Not necessarily for the finals, I didn't have too much time to prepare for this, so I've been pretty open-minded in this series. Otherwise I've been preparing very hard for each series and I think I've been getting a lot of good build orders and some cheeky wins there and here."