IWDominate

Last updated

IWDominate
IWDominate.png
IWDominate in 2023
Current team
Team Cloud 9
RoleConsultant
Game League of Legends
League League of The Americas
Personal information
NameChristian Rivera
Born (1990-08-13) 13 August 1990 (age 35)
New York City
NationalityAmerican
Career information
Playing career2011–2016
RoleJungle
Team history
2011–2012 compLexity Gaming
2012 Dignitas
2013 Team Curse Academy
2013–2015 Team Curse
2015 Team Liquid
Career highlights and awards
  • 1x NALCS regular season winner (2015 Summer)
  • 1x IEM World Championship runner-up (Season 6)
Sports commentary career
Sport Esports
Employer Tencent (2021)
Twitch information
Channel
Years active2013–present
Genre
Followers896,000
YouTube information
Channel
Genre
Subscribers436,000 [1]
Views365,000,000 [1]
Last updated: 16 August 2025

Christian Rivera, better known as IWDominate, IWillDominate (or simply IWD or Dom), is an American live streamer, YouTuber, podcaster and esports consultant. He is also a retired professional League of Legends player in the LCS, and a former co-owner of The Ruddy Sack, a professional team in the Nordic scene. [2]

Contents

Known for holding co-streams of major professional League of Legends regional and international competitions, IWDominate is one of the biggest streamers within the game's community, mostly known for his in-depth gameplay analysis and extensive experience in the League of Legends esports scene.

On the livestreaming platform Twitch, IWDominate operates ones of the most watched channels on the League of Legends category and constantly ranks as one of the top LTA co-streamers, competing in viewership with the official broadcast and Caedrel. [3] IWDominate has also been as a caster for the Chinese League of Legends Pro League, where he is a big fan of the team Anyone's Legend. [4]

Early life

Rivera was born on August 13, 1990 in New York City. After his family moved to Florida when he was 5, [5] he developed an obsession with videogames, starting with Donkey Kong and Super Mario, before moving on to real-time-strategy games such as Warcraft III. He was also heavily into tennis and baseball, competing in the United States Tennis Association and playing in the regional Florida leagues for baseball. [6]

He started playing League of Legends after watching the 2010 World Cyber Games, where he was instantly drawn to it, quickly downloading it and finding it easy, reaching rank one within six months of playing. [7]

Rivera enrolled at the University of Miami, but after his sophomore year of college ended in 2011, he decided to drop out and pursue his professional career at 20 years old. [5]

Professional career

Early career

After a brief stint with amateur team Haters Make Us Famous, IWDominate began his professional career in 2011, joining CompLexity Gaming as their jungler until the end of the year. In January 2012, he signed with Team Dignitas, replacing Joshua "Jatt" Leesman. With Dignitas, he helped the team qualify for the Season 2 World Championship. [8]

Suspension

Rivera's tenure at Dignitas was cut short due to repeated in-game misconduct. On December 5, 2012, Riot Games issued a one-year LCS suspension and permanently banned all of Rivera’s League accounts for toxic behavior, citing multiple Tribunal cases and consistently high rankings for verbal abuse. [9] During his suspension, Rivera created a new account “IWDomínate” and climbed to 2,200 Elo while streaming on Twitch. Rivera developed a much-improved attitude during this period. [10]

Team Curse/Team Liquid

In mid-2013, he joined Team Curse's academy team in the Challenger Series. later serving as coach/analyst for the main roster. His LCS ban concluded in November 2013, soon afterwards he officially joined Team Curse as their starting jungler. In early 2015, Team Curse rebranded to Team Liquid following acquisition. Rivera became team captain in the Summer Split, leading Team Liquid to a 13–5 regular-season record. He was named to the 2015 Summer Split Second All-Pro Team. Though the team performed strongly in regular season, they failed to qualify for the World Championship through playoffs and qualifiers. [11]

Retirement and coaching career

In early 2016, Rivera briefly returned to the Team Liquid starting lineup for the Spring Split, but after just one game he announced his retirement from professional play. He cited a desire to move into coaching and content creation. Team Liquid immediately promoted young jungler Joshua "Dardoch" Hartnett as his replacement. Rivera remained with Liquid as a positional coach for Dardoch and also appeared occasionally on the analyst desk for the LCS.

Post-professional play

Content creation

After formally retiring, he became a full-time streamer and content creator. He continued with Team Liquid’s organization for several years, building a personal Twitch following, achieving nearly 800,000 followers by 2020 and producing game-analysis videos and co-streams of the LCS.

In August 2020, Cloud9 announced that Rivera would leave Team Liquid to join Cloud9 as a League of Legends content creator. [12] During his tenure he continued to stream full-time, co-streaming League Championship Series broadcasts and other tournaments. Rivera remained with Cloud9 until December 2022, where they parted ways on good terms. [13]

Rivera remains a prominent figure in the North American League community. He continues to co-stream competitive games from leagues around the world, including the LCK, LTA, LPL and LEC. He also occasionally provides analysis for Riot and third-party broadcasts. [14]

The Ruddy Sack

In early 2025, Rivera expanded into team ownership, becoming co-owner of an NLC (Northern League of Legends Championship) slot alongside popular content creators Jakob 'YamatoCannon' Mebdi and Jake 'DonJake' Morley for the rebranded The Ruddy Sack (formerly Ruddy Esports). [15] The expanded team featured high-profile players such as Luka 'Perkz' Perković, Marcin 'Jankos' Jankowski, Adam 'LIDER' Ilyasov, Humzh, and Morgan 'Hustlin' Granberg, with YamatoCannon serving as coach. [16] [17] The team aimed at providing a different style of content creation and humour, including custom 3D environments on Rivera's stream, akin to those ran by official broadcasts during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and streaming scrims akin to Los Ratones, who they competed against. The rebrand, designed by Teddy 'DrLimbani' Westside, and ownership changes were announced in January 2025, alongside a UK-based watch party at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere. [18]

During the 2025 NLC Winter playoffs, The Ruddy Sack underperformed expectations and lost a close upper-bracket match to Bulldog Esports and were eliminated after a best-of-five series. [19] Rivera acknowledged the poor performance on stream, calling for roster changes and strategic restructuring, and stated that the ownership remained committed to improving team cohesion and viewing experience moving forward.

For the 2025 NLC Spring split, the roster would field a more traditional 'Ruddy' roster with less popular streamers. They would perform well, securing the team a slot at the Season Finals in Copenhagen, where the team placed 3rd after being eliminated by Los Ratones. After the split concluded, DonJake announced on The Ruddy Sack's account on X/Twitter that Ruddy Esports and The Sack had parted ways on good terms, [20] citing financial issues and uncertainty around the health of streamer teams. [21]

Controversies

Verbal abuse and offensive language

Throughout his streaming career, Rivera has been known for an outspoken and sometimes abrasive personality. His 2012 suspension is the most significant, when Riot Games announced that he would be suspended from all LCS competition for one year and that all of his League of Legends accounts would be permanently banned. [9] Riot’s announcement cited Rivera’s “persistent record” of verbal abuse and offensive language, noting he had been brought before the Tribunal nine times (with eight punishments) and was among the worst 0.7% of North American players for harassment. Dignitas subsequently removed him from their roster. Denied the LCS for a year, Rivera took the suspension as a chance to reform. In late 2012 he climbed the ranked ladder to 2200 Elo, and began streaming on Twitch to demonstrate improved behavior. [10]

Feud with Tyler1

In March 2020, Rivera made a public statement confirming his relationship with Katerino, a streamer who was cheating on her boyfriend with two popular streamers, CallMeCarson and Fitz. He has stated he wasn’t aware of this drama before the relationship began. Tyler1 criticised Rivera for this, which resulted in a heated argument where Rivera called Tyler1 a “cancer human being” for not defending him during the drama. Instead, he claimed Tyler1 was one of the people to “continue shitting on” him about the entire situation. [22]

References

  1. 1 2 "About IWDominate". YouTube.
  2. ↑ "IWDominate, LEC legends form Ruddy Sack team". esports.gg. 5 January 2025. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  3. ↑ "IWDominate - Twitch Stats, Analytics and Channel Overview". streamscharts.com. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  4. ↑ Sacco, Dom (4 July 2021). "IWillDominate to make pro casting debut in the LPL with UK caster Munchables". Esports News UK. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  5. 1 2 pubgenius.io; Kostov, Stole (22 June 2023). "The Story of IWillDominate LoL". TearOfTheGoddess. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  6. ↑ Jacobs, Harrison. "Pro gamer earning six figures quit playing sports because it wasn't 'on an even playing field'". Business Insider. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  7. ↑ IWDominate Live (28 April 2025). LOL Is A Good Game? . Retrieved 16 August 2025– via YouTube.
  8. ↑ "Cloud9 Welcomes IWillDominate as League Of Legends Content Creator". Cloud9 Esports. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  9. 1 2 "Riot bans professional League of Legends player Christian 'IWillDominate' Rivera". GameSpot. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  10. 1 2 Lingle, Samuel (2 June 2014). "Two 'League of Legends' pros banned after using racist slurs". Dot Esports. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  11. ↑ Jacobs, Harrison. "These guys earn six figures and live for free in LA just for being great at video games". Business Insider. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  12. ↑ Lunardi, Lara (7 August 2020). "Cloud9 signs IWDominate as their newest League of Legends content creator". InvenGlobal. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  13. ↑ Staff, Esports (23 December 2022). "Cloud9 Streamer IWillDominate Leaves the Organisation". Esports.net. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  14. ↑ Ballestrasse, Michelle (7 February 2021). "LoL Streamer IWillDominate Allowed By Riot Games To Resume Co-Streams". ScreenRant. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  15. ↑ "Sources: Perkz, Jankos, Lider, Jackspektra, Nash, IWD, YamatoCannon in process to partner with Ruddy Esports in NLC". sheepesports.com. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  16. ↑ "Sources: humzh set to join Ruddy Esports instead of Jackspektra". sheepesports.com. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  17. ↑ "Sources: Hustlin set to join Ruddy Esports in NLC 2025". sheepesports.com. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  18. ↑ Sacco, Dom (9 January 2025). "Ruddy rebrand to The Ruddy Sack for 2025 NLC as they send out rallying cry to rival teams, with IWillDominate and YamatoCannon joining as co-owners and big-name roster featuring Perkz, plus new watch party announced". Esports News UK. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  19. ↑ Sacco, Dom (20 February 2025). "Reaction as Bulldog Esports defeat The Ruddy Sack 3-2 to knock them out of the NLC Winter playoffs, IWDominate says 'something has to change' as DonJake and players also react". Esports News UK. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  20. ↑ Morris, Joey (15 July 2025). "The Ruddy Sack to go on 'hiatus' for NLC Summer Split". Esports Insider. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  21. ↑ "Sources: The Ruddy Sack Co-Owner DonJake to play jungle for his own team amid uncertainty surrounding the NLC". sheepesports.com. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
  22. ↑ "IWillDominate calls Tyler1 a "cancer human being" amid ongoing feud". Dexerto. 17 May 2020. Retrieved 16 August 2025.
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