Ever since League of Legends got an esports scene, Yiliang "Doublelift" Peng has been out there, competing against the top prospects. This veteran always held his own and he built an incredible career with 7 NA LCS trophies to his name. This week in our two-part series, we take a look at this veteran's story, so do not miss out!
Early career
Despite his Asian origins, Yiliang Peng was born in Mission Viejo, California, and he proudly represents the US of A everywhere he goes. Just like every other esports athlete, he started gaming at a very young age.
Guess what, the first game he ever played was not LoL, but Dota. On top of that, he played World of Warcraft and Heroes of Newerth. During his early League of Legends days, the young gamer by the alias of Doublelift started off as a support player.
Despite being super talented, Doublelift never really got the support he needed from his parents. Once he joined his first big team called Epik Gamer, his parents had to allow him to travel to Sweden for a DreamHack event. In the beginning, they weren’t interested at all but with the help of his brother, Yiliang packed his bags and flew to Scandinavia.
On top of that, Peng was socially awkward once he met his teammates and he openly stated that in his Reddit AMA. He also talked about his parents kicking him out after he came back from Sweden. All in all, he is very grateful for Epik Gamer as he believes he would never have gone pro without them.
"Without Epik Gamer, I would have never made it into the pro scene most likely."
The only thing he brought with himself was his PC and the DreamHack prize money. He wrote another thread about him being homeless. Luckily, Team Curse picked him up and he started producing tutorials and guides for their site. At the time, this was his only way of making money and he was happy he could pay rent with it.
Yiliang is rightfully named as the best AD carry in NA. If you are interested in his personal and team achievements, make sure you come back and read part 2 of our Life and times series where we will take a dive into his trophies and individual records.
Personal life
Even though most esports athletes don't get the support they needed and wanted when starting out, Doublelift definitely had the worst path to success out of every other esports pro.
As we mentioned above, he was kicked out at a very young age and he had no one to turn to. He mentioned in one of his interviews that all he had was his wallet with cash and a PayPal account.
Luckily, he had a guardian angel watching out for him. Esports journalist Travis Gafford said that he first met Doublelift after he took to Reddit, explaining that he was homeless. Travis offered Peng his couch until he could afford to pay rent. These two are still great friends and Doublelift has nothing but gratitude for Travis.
“He helped me set up a bank account, he helped me set up my life.”
After some back-and-forth, Peng was finally able to find his footing in early 2018. After he joined Team Liquid, Doublelift carried them to their first finals ever.
A couple of days before the finals, news broke that Yiliang’s mother was killed and that his father was injured. According to reports, his older brother Yihong stabbed them. The news hit Peng really hard, but he did not back out from the finals and saw Team Liquid defeat 100Thieves to win their first NA LCS.
At the time of writing, Yiliang is in a happy relationship with his girlfriend and president of Team SoloMid Leena Xu (her Instagram can be found here).
It is rumored that Doublelift is worth over $3 million – compared to other League of Legends pros, we can freely say that he is amongst the richest pros on the scene.
In one of his latest Twitter posts, Pengbragged about getting a Honda Accord for himself. He also mentioned that this was his first “real” car.
Did you know that own3d.tv still owes Doublelift around $20,000 for an exclusive deal they had with the CLG League of Legends team? We're sure they will send them out soon(tm).
But we're not here just for the trivia, are we? We are here for Doublelift's sick plays on the League of Legends pro scene. Make sure you stop by later for Part 2 of the Life and times of Doublelift where we will take a deep dive into his career achievements.
