Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games Flickr
Joe ‘Munchables’ Fenny is a UK esports legend at this point, having worked in the space for a decade on broadcasts from the NUEL to the ESL UK Premiership, EU Masters, Chinese LPL and more.
While he worked on Intel Extreme Masters’ final League of Legends broadcast back in 2017, MSI 2023 in London marks his first Riot international event. What does he think of the teams at this year’s event, and what kind of a caster is he? We caught up with him after his first day-one cast of MSI London.
This is your first major Riot international event. I feel like you’ve been patient and have deserved this chance. What are your thoughts on being a part of the MSI 2023 broadcast talent line-up?
First of all, you’re too kind! You’re a legend yourself mate!
It’s amazing, I feel like I’ve waited a long time for this opportunity. I’m just fresh off my first cast, which I think went pretty well – it’s not my greatest cast, but I feel like it went okay.
The crowd was awesome, it was cool to be in the arena and hear my own voice through the speakers. It was sick. It was an amazing opportunity, I was so over the moon to be here.
Tell us about you as a caster, you’ve done a lot of other broadcasts over the years. I remember interviewing you, Munchables, back in 2015 for the ESL UK Premiership.
While this is my first MSI, I did an international event, IEM 2017, a long time ago now, in Poland, Katowice. Excoundrel hosted on the desk and I cast one of the semi-finals with Vedius.
For anyone that doesn’t know me, I commentate the LPL regularly, I’m also doing a bit of commentary in Valorant now, just starting to dip my toes into that, so I’m hoping to do a bit more Valorant, because I’m loving the game at the minute.
I’m hoping I can do more international events in League, I’m hoping for some casting assignments for week number two (of MSI 2023) but we’ll see whether that can happen or not.
I’m just hyped to be here, because I’ve been casting League for a decade at this point, from hobbyist to professional, and I’ve always watched these tournaments. I tweeted saying I went to All-Stars Paris in 2014, when I was a Fnatic fan at the time as a wee nipper. I took my Fnatic mouse mat with me and I still have a bunch of signatures on it, that’s my travel mouse mat. So I have that with me, nine years on.
All-Stars was sort of the predecessor to this tournament, so it feels kind of poetic that I finally made it here. This was my dream all those years ago.
What did you think of the first match, PSG beating DFM 2-0?
In game number one, JunJia got caught out a couple of times but it was generally clean from PSG. Game number two, I thought DFM had it in the bag, I was very surprised that PSG were able to come back.
It’s a testament to PSG and their control of the game. Even when DFM were ahead in the second game, once it got to the Elder Dragon, DFM were still trying to put the pressure on but PSG were doing an amazing job of mitigating a lot of that pressure. Wako holding on in the base and trading kills against Elder consistently, that’s testament to a really great late game team. A fantastic start for PSG.
What are your thoughts on EU’s chances and who you feel will get to the latter stages of MSI 2023 and win it?
EU is an interesting one because of how playoffs went, Mad Lions having a crazy playoffs run [to reach MSI 2023]… I feel like you’re looking at a very different Mad Lions at the end of the LEC finals compared to when they started the finals.
It’s a very difficult question to answer – which version of Mad Lions will we get?
And G2, being knocked out of the LEC playoffs reasonably early compared to expectations, but obviously qualifying from the winter split, I feel like G2 are coming in very well-prepped. Even if G2 fumble a bit, we’ve seen it where they come back and win. The question is whether enough prep is enough. Apparently they’re doing well in scrims, from what I’ve heard, but how true that all is, and if scrims matter, it comes down to your own personal taste and how much you take that with a pinch of salt.
In my Caps interview he came across confident, he’s top of the solo queue ladder. Time will tell whether he plays well in this tournament. Who do you think will reach the finals?
I think the most obvious answer to the question is JDG and Gen.G – seed one from LCK and LPL.
I think the top four at MSI 2023 will be rounded off with T1 and BLG. I think a lot of people really rate T1 coming into this tournament despite their finals, I feel like I’m leaning towards their recency more than a lot of people are, I think a lot of people are rating them based on potential peak performance.
Predictions are always a dangerous game, because what shows up on the day is not always the same thing you’re predicting on. But I think BLG are kind of underrated coming into the tournament. They didn’t look super hot during the finals, but if you look at the upper bracket game that they had against JDG, they looked absolutely on fire.
Bin is a player that’s never not looked good at the international level, I feel like he’s always showed up at internationals and I think he loves the hype of being on that stage and the excitement of that. I feel like he comes alive at these kinds of tournaments, so BLG are a team to watch, but Bin specifically is a big player to watch at MSI 2023.
Munchables interview quickfire round – cockney rhyming slang with Dom Sacco
Apples and pears.
Stairs.
Dog and bone.
Phone.
Steffi Graf.
Laugh.
You’ve got all three correct! How about, dustin lids?
Kids.
You got it! I have to keep going until you get one wrong. Duck and dive.
Hide, apparently.
Munchables, it’s been great talking to you. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Just excited to be here. I hope to do more. Good luck to JDG and BLG, I really hope they can have a great international show, especially knight – he’s kind of flopped previously and I want to see him show up at this one.
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
