Chinese-American League of Legends professional e-sports player Doublelift is coming out of retirement and will form and play with new team Near Airport..

Chinese-American professional League of Legends Bot Laner Doublelift, announced that he will be his coming out of retirement on Thursday through his official X (Twitter) account and official personal YouTube channel, and will form a new team Near Airport.

According to Doublelift's official statement, Near Airport will be composed of an all-Asian-American lineup, and the team will be making their debut in the 2025 North American Challenger League (NACL) Split 1 on March 26.

In his official introduction video, Doublelift revealed that the members of the Near Airport lineup, in addition to himself who will play the Bot lane, are Spica (Jungler), Pobelter (Mid Laner), Biofrost (Support) and TFBlade (Top Laner), while Croissant will serve as the head coach.

This will also be the first time that Spica, Doublelift, and Biofrost have reunited after leaving TSM 5 years ago.

Pobelter, TFBlade and Croissant have also reunited since their cooperation at Liquid 5 years ago.

Regarding the challenges when they faced while forming Near Airport after this comeback, Doublelift said: "The training is not going well. Time investment is a big problem. I'm not sure everyone can do it, right? We all have our own live streaming schedules, sponsors and personal lives. And Biofrost is still a college student."

TFBlade revealed: "I have been playing as a Top Laner for the past eight years. Now, I will be paying attention to professional tournaments for the first time. It will be fun, but I will also take it more seriously, maybe even for competitive purposes. But yes, I am looking forward to seeing how it all develops."

It is worth mentioning that Near Airport had already participated in the 2025 NACL qualifiers before announcement of their official reorganization. The team swept every opponent during the qualifiers and secured the qualification for each season of this year's NACL with a perfect score.

About Doublelift

Doublelift, 31 years old, whose real name is Peng Yiliang, was born on July 19, 1993 in Mission Viejo, California, USA, to a Chinese family. His ancestral hometown is Shanghai, China.

Doublelift aspired to become a professional e-sports player at a young age. In 2011, he joined Epik Gamer as a Support.

However, his parents opposed his aspirations, thus he was kicked out of the house after participating in the DreamHack Masters in 2011.

After leaving home, Doublelift moved into the home of Tnomad, the former Head of Media of Yahoo Esports, and later moved into their practice room after joining Counter Logic Gaming (CLG).

During his three-year stint with CLG, Doublelift won the 2016 North American LCS Spring and Summer Seasons with the team, and then qualified for the League of Legends World Championship that year.

In October 2016, Doublelift moved to TSM, replacing the ADC player WildTurtle who had been playing for the team for a long time.

During this spell, he and his team had a clean sweep against his former team CLG and won the 2017 North American LCS Spring Season. Doublelift also won the LCS All-Pro First Team for his outstanding performance.

In March 2017, due to a falling out with some of his TSM teammates, Doublelift moved to Liquid.

During this spell, he recorded a clean sweep against C9 and FOX with the team in the 2018 North American LCS Spring Season playoffs and entered the finals.

On the evening of March 30, 2018, his brother Peng Yihong stabbed his parents with a knife due to personal emotional problems, resulting in the death of his mother and serious injuries to their father. Subsequently, Peng Yihong fled the crime scene and was later detained by the police on murder charges and released on bail of $1 million.

Despite such a tragic family change, Doublelift still insisted on participating in the 2018 North American LCS Spring Season Finals and swept 100 Thieves with 3:0 to win the championship.

Since then, he has won the North American LCS Summer Season once, the Spring Season once, and the 2019 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational with the team, and was selected into the 2019 Forbes Under 30 Gaming Celebrity List.

In the summer of 2020, Doublelift returned to TSM. During this spell, he won his 8th North American LCS Spring Season championship in his personal career.

In November of the same year, Doublelift announced that he would retire and leave the League of Legends professional e-sports circle.

A few months later, he revealed that he made this decision because of a complete fall-out with TSM's largest shareholder Reginald.

After retiring, Doublelift announced that he would be switching to become a full-time streamer, but suddenly announced at the end of 2022 that he would return to represent 100 Thieves in the 2023 season.

In December of the following year, Doublelift announced his retirement again, and has not returned until now.

Interestingly, Doublelift had once earned the nickname "Big Brother" in China due to his interesting remarks.