9Pandas recreated an iconic Puppey meme at Riyadh Masters 2023

Dota 2 and its memes are quintessential to how entertaining this magnificent game is. And while we have had several defining memes in Dota 2 Esports history, it’s always nice to see 9Pandas show us a throwback to the infamous TI9 Puppey Midone meme.

9Pandas remade the iconic Puppey meme

It was the International 9 (TI9) when Yeik “MidOne” Nai Zheng was still in Team Secret with the captain, Clement “Puppey” Ivanov. Secret had to play in the lower bracket as early as the second round of playoffs.

Mineski, as the underdogs, has done their in-depth study enough to cripple Midone’s hero pool, such that he had to pick Meepo in game 1. It was evident that Midone’s Meepo wasn’t his best hero as he constantly got hunted down by Mineski. Surely not an ideal play, considering Dota 2 Meepo should have higher efficiency and farming than most carry heroes due to having five units.

Ultimately, Secret somehow won the first round despite having a 20K gold deficit, but Puppey was certainly not pleasant about his star player’s underwhelming performance. As such, we got one of the most iconic Puppey stare post-match, which captures the player’s menacing look.

This clip accompanied the original Reddit poster’s caption, “I’m so kicking you after TI.”

Fast forward to 9Pandas at the Riyadh Masters 2023, where they faced off against BetBoom Team in the upper bracket playoffs.

Gleb “kiyotaka” Zyryanov’s Windranger was having a field trip with flawless performance and farm. Yet, it all boiled down to kiyotaka’s questionable decision to walk into the enemy base alone without buyback. While he was invisible, he probably wasn’t expecting enemy sentries at the spot where his team already destroyed the barracks.

Instead of kiyotaka making a play to pick off an easy support or bait Storm Spirit’s BKB use, he got initiated upon. The many lockdowns BetBoom had were enough to kill him off before his team could back him up. Hence, BetBoom punished 9Pandas’ failure to capitalize on Egor “Nightfall” Grigorenko’s 90-second death without buyback.

This led to BetBoom making a massive comeback from a game with 20K gold deficit. The best part is that post-match, kiyotaka’s teammate, Roman “RAMZES666” Kushnarev gave him the exact stare and pose towards the former.

This flop cemented 9Pandas as the creators of yet another hilarious Dota 2 meme.