definitly the best of all times. A lot of old timers instantly think of JO waldner or wang liqin or whatever. The thing is table tennis has never been so competitive, with so MANY stars and top of the line players as the china team has atm.
i have seen most of the matches of JO waldner at his peak, and the diference to me is simply HUGE. Ma long is way better in every aspect of the game. Waldner was really good and in his particular moment in time, and people loves him because he was representing all that europe part of the sport that did not wanna fall under the chinese dominance.
There hasnt been a generation so strong and amazing as the one with xu xin, zhang jike, fanzhendong, and Ma long. No player at his peak had such a formidable amount of amazing skilled players to compete with. I mean guys if we look a few months back on the marvellous 12 tournament in china to decide wich chinese players were coming to WTTC 2017. That thing alone was even better than the wttc itself. Those matches are so freaking out of this world that you won't find any of the ones from the past being like that.
The sport has evolved, like in football it was all beautifull and nice 50 years ago, but the kind of physical strenght and training that exists and its demanded now in every sport has transformed all of them into something way better than ever before.
In the end of the day you cant compare different eras, define what you mean about today's era being more "competitive" Its all about the chinese, koreans and japanese are catching up slowly but not enough cause the CNT will always adapt like they did with sweden and now hirano
In the 38mm hidden serve era, it wasnt only about the chinese. There were at least 5-6 players who could clinch the title,2-3chinese , waldner, persson, saive, gatien and later samsonov. And there were also numerous dangerous players who could defeat the chinese but werent consitent enough to clinch any big world title, kreanga, rosskopf, damien eloi,appelgren,kim taek soo,primorac, korbel, karakasevic
Nowadays the CNT only had to worry seriously about koki and boll as he was in great form, dima still needs more variation in his game to be an actual threat.
Yes the training and demands of TT are definitely way harder compared to 20 years ago, but its not "more competitive" when china wins gold in teams and singles for the past 15 years. Japan's biggest wins were against XX, lee sang su had to face a sloppy ZJK to clinch bronze, winning against the top 2 right now is out of the question but when it happes because it will happen, then maybe the rest of the world will start to believe in it more.