Cloud9 jungler Robert “Blaber” Huang added a fresh entry to his crab collection.
In Cloud9’s opening game of the season against TLAW, Blaber was on Skarner and committed to a Rift Scuttler contest in the river while enemy players were already in position to punish him.
It went badly on both counts. The opposing Wukong walked away with the Scuttler, and Blaber never got out of the river.
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An enemy Nautilus was close enough to lock him down, and viewers pointed out the support appeared to be holding Red Brambleback buff at the time, which would’ve added a slow and extra damage on top of Nautilus’ already brutal crowd control. Between the hook, the passive root, and the slow, Skarner had nowhere to go.
The immediate cost was the usual package: gold and experience handed to the enemy jungler, the Scuttler and its Speed Shrine lost, and Blaber sat waiting to respawn while the opposing jungler had the map to himself.
Viewers spent the aftermath debating whether Blaber could’ve simply repositioned. Rift Scuttler runs away from whoever is hitting it, so standing on the other side of the crab could’ve dragged the fight in a safer direction. The counterargument was that doing so would’ve pushed the Scuttler straight toward Nautilus instead. Either way, with Nautilus’ crowd control and a Red Buff slow, escape routes were thin. Blaber himself appeared to see the humor in it, cracking a smile on player cam after the sequence.
Son of a crab
If the clip feels familiar, that’s the point. Blaber has carried the nickname “Crabber” since Cloud9’s 2021 Mid-Season Invitational run, where he burned Flash on an early Scuttler contest and died for it. That single play turned into a permanent meme, and every risky crab fight since has been measured against it.
Blaber has also joked recently that he should’ve leaned into the Crabber branding more. He now has a new clip to work with. The broadcast leaned in as well. Caster Clayton “CaptainFlowers” Raines greeted the death with an exasperated “son of a crab.”
For context, Blaber remains one of North America’s most decorated junglers, with multiple domestic titles and MVP awards built on exactly this kind of early-game aggression. The upside is invades, ganks, and stolen objectives. The downside is river crabs.
