![]() Steve Davis, the former world champion, BBC pundit and Hearn’s good friend, didn’t like the perceived shot at the establishment and took Ronnie to task in an interviewer for the broadcaster. “If anyone else can go and put a performance in like that then here’s my cue, here’s my chalk and my waistcoat now go and do it.”Īt the tailend of 2018, it was heavily rumoured that O’Sullivan would be spearheading a breakaway snooker tour featuring a number of top pros and up-and-coming youngsters. “I wasn’t taking it seriously, I was just having a bit of a laugh and I hope everybody sees it that way. So peeved was the Rocket by a reduction in prize money for making the maximum break, he deliberately took a pink instead of the black to finish up with a 146 effort.īarry Hearn, snooker’s chief, called it ‘disrespectful and unacceptable to the paying public’, but when quizzed afterwards the Essex potter said: Most snooker players and lovers would give their right arm to make a maximum, but not Ronnie – he’s got stacks of 147s to his name already. The holy grail of snooker perfection is the 147 break – 15 reds, 15 blacks and then the colours in sequence. And so he started playing left-handed….and he still won at a canter.Īt the Welsh Open in 2016, Ronnie made history….for all the wrong reasons (although not in his opinion, of course). The Canadian was a solid player but he could not compete with the Rocket, who later moaned that he was ‘bored’ throughout their encounter. Maybe Ronnie felt like he had to live up to the image, because he began to showboat in his matches and on his debut at the Crucible for the World Championships he humiliated Alain Robidoux. When Ronnie first burst onto the snooker scene in the mid-1990s, he was positioned as the sport’s hellraiser – a young, brash and arrogant so-and-so in the vein of the legendary Alex Higgins. So to celebrate the Rocket’s ongoing success at the top of snooker, here’s a look back at some of his most controversial interviews so far: Taking the Michael ![]() ![]() “I’ve probably got to lose an arm and a leg to fall outside the top 50!”Ī little harsh, perhaps, but there always seems to be a grain of truth to everything Ronnie says – no matter how inflammatory. “When you look at the younger players coming through they’re not that good really, and most of them would probably be half-decent amateurs – not even amateurs, they’re so bad. The Rocket’s latest diatribe came at the 2020 World Championships, when quizzed about why he and Mark Williams – his quarter-final opponents – were both still reaching the business end of tournaments despite being in their forties. Modern sportsmen and women are taught, by and large, to be respectful of your fellow pros and the profession itself at all times.īut Ronnie O’Sullivan skipped that day on his ‘introduction to being the perfect pro’ training course, and so nearly 30 years after turning professional he remains snooker’s most controversial and outspoken character. Image Credit: Bill da Flute, Wikimedia Commons ![]()
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