Esso
1x LBT Champion
8 Wins (1 Via No Show) - 0 Losses
Battle Record:
Vs Obey (Via No Show) - Won the LBT Title
Vs Rieper (52%) - Defended LBT Title
Vs Wonderbred (67%) - Defended LBT Title
Vs CakedOut (86%) - Defended LBT Title
Vs Celsius (62%) - Defended LBT Title
Vs Shodan (86%) - Defended LBT Title
Vs HomeSkool (67%) - Defended LBT Title
Vs Celsius (62%) - Defended LBT Title
Esso had 7 consecutive defences before being made to vacate the title in return for receiving the King award. If anyone's saying "ILLo is the only one who deserves the title" they need to have a look at his record. Wins over Lockhart, Celsius (twice), Shodan – those are all names that crop up high on most peoples lists of greatest textcees. Also, an undefeated 7-defence streak culminating in mandatory vacation of the title is pretty compelling to me.
So who's more deserving, ILLo or Esso? My answer is both. They were both undisputed champions for a very long time in their own day, which is the point of the LBT King/Legend title. It shows that a particular champion dominated throughout their day and reigned without being unseated. Whether that's for 7, 8, 9, 10 or whatever bouts is honestly irrelevant and pretty arbitrary, I think if we come up with a number now we should stick to it going forward but its pretty irrelevant looking back if someone was made to retire undefeated cos they probably would have won that one extra battle anyway.
I believe the LBT Legend title should not be an interchangeable one, we already have the LBT Champion for that. The point of the title is to reflect someone who dominated the belt during their era, and it makes sense there could be multiple legends from different eras. Also, given that someone only becomes eligible for one of these titles once every several years, expecting the previous winner to hang around in the woodwork waiting for literal years to defend 1 interchangeable title against someone from a different generation of textcees is totally unrealistic imo.
Rai is a different case, I think there are strong arguments for and against him having the title. By putting it on the line against ILLoKWENT I think he gives us all an opportunity to resolve this question though. If he wins, he's clearly on the level of other Legends and deserves the title. If he loses, he's agreed to forfeit his title. It's simple, and he's agreed to it (huge props to Rai for that btw).
I genuinely don't think the LBT King/Legend title is in the kind of crisis everyone's making it out to be. Until Rai was crowned, it was very straightforward: win 7 consecutive defences then you retire and get the permanent title. Once Rai vs ILLo is finished, I see no reason we can't return to this policy and just have Rai as an exception if he wins. The LBA is another story but its unclear if that will even exist going forwards so why not just focus on the LBT for now?
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