Greatest male player in his PRIME (PEAK)

Greatest male player in his PRIME (PEAK)

  • Wan Liqin

    Votes: 25 39.1%
  • Waldner

    Votes: 21 32.8%
  • Ma Lin

    Votes: 2 3.1%
  • Kong

    Votes: 1 1.6%
  • Liu Guoliang

    Votes: 1 1.6%
  • Guo Yehua

    Votes: 1 1.6%
  • Jiang Jialiang

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Ma Long

    Votes: 12 18.8%
  • Wang Hao

    Votes: 1 1.6%
  • other

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    64
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I know,than a lot of people will say Waldner,but IMO its about his beautiful game and longevity. And if we will watch objective,who is the greatest player of all-time in his prime? Candidates: Jiang Jialiang,
Guo Yehua,Waldner, Kong,Liu Guolang, Ma Lin,Wan Liqin, Wang Hao,Ma Long,Zhang Jike.
Your opinion...
 
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Well this may seem odd but I'm inclined to say Wang Liqin, he's won 13 gold medals at World Championships, 3 in the singles (and 7 more non-gold medals) he is also 2nd on the records for the longest serving world number 1 at 25 consecutive months and has also won 4 bronze medals in singles at the World Cup. His career has spent so many years in the World's top 10 and he is still a world class player even at his age where many would say he should be far past his peak where the other older players have retired and the younger ones cannot compete with his success records!
 
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Well this may seem odd but I'm inclined to say Wang Liqin, he's won 13 gold medals at World Championships, 3 in the singles (and 7 more non-gold medals) he is also 2nd on the records for the longest serving world number 1 at 25 consecutive months and has also won 4 bronze medals in singles at the World Cup. His career has spent so many years in the World's top 10 and he is still a world class player even at his age where many would say he should be far past his peak where the other older players have retired and the younger ones cannot compete with his success records!
And who is first? Who was longest time on 1 spot (concecutive and not)?
 
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Chinese Olympic winners in the last 20 years of the games.

SINGLES GOLD SILVER BRONZE
1992 Barcelona Waldner Gatien Taek-Soo/Ma Wenge
1996 Atlanta Guoliang Wang Tao Jorg Roskopf
2000 Sydney LingHui Waldner Guoliang
2004 Athens Seung-Min Wang Hao WLQ
2008 Beijing Ma Lin Wang Hao WLQ

Chinese athlete medal leaders
Athlete Nation Gender Olympics[a] Gold Silver Bronze Total
Wang Nan China (CHN) Female 2000–2008 4 1 0 5
Deng Yaping China (CHN) Female 1992–1996 4 0 0 4
Zhang Yinin China (CHN) Female 2004–2008 4 0 0 4
Liu Guoliang China (CHN) Male 1996–2000 2 1 1 4
Qiao Hong China (CHN) Female 1992–1996 2 1 1 4
Wang Liqin China (CHN) Male 2000–2008 2 0 2 4
Chen Jing China (CHN) Female 1988,1996–2000 1 2 1 4
Yoo Nam-Kyu (KOR) Male 1988–1996 1 0 3 4
Ryu Seung-Min (KOR) Male 2004–2008 1 0 1 2
Ma Lin China (CHN) Male 2004–2008 3 0 0 3
Kong Linghu China (CHN) Male 1996–2000 2 1 0 3
Wang Hao China (CHN) Male 2004–2008 1 2 0 3
Wang Tao China (CHN) Male 1992–1996 1 2 0 3
Hyun Jung-Hwa (KOR) Female 1988–1992 1 0 2 3
Guo Yue China (CHN) Female 2004–2008 1 0 2 3

WLQ won 2 golds. Doubles in Sydney 2000 partnering with Yan Seng. Team event in Beijing 2008 with Ma LIn & Wang Hao. The 2 bronze is from men's singles (2004,2008) - 4MEDALS

Wang Hao won 1 gold. It was in the team event in 2008 Beijing with WLQ & Ma Lin. the 2 silvers are from the men's singles (2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing) - 3MEDALS

Ma Lin won 3 golds (2004 doubles with Chen Qi, 2008 Team event with WLQ & Wang Hao, 2008 singles) - 3MEDALS
 
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it's Wang Hao with 27 consecutive months :D

This is not accurate. Wang Hao's longest stretch at #1 was 22 consecutive months. It is pretty decent. But not 25 or 27 months. You can look at the world ranking history for Wang Hao here: http://www.ittf.com/_front_page/ittf1.asp?category=wr

You just go to the current world rankings and click on Wang Hao's name.

The guy who had more than 25 months at the top was not from this era. He was a Hungarian player from the Hard Bat era. I think his name was Victor Barna. There was another thread on this.

Wang Liqin, in his prime, at the top of his game, was better and more dominant than anyone. If you click on his ranking history it is not so hard to see it. But numbers do not really show how dominant he was. His forehand beat down the whole entire pro ranks while he was on top of his game. Nobody has been that dominant for that amount of time.

I love Waldner and I love how he played but he was great and his level dropped and then he would come back and his level would drop. When he won the second World Championships Singles title in 1997 he was ranked 5th going into the tournament. He was a great all around player. But Wang Liqin beat his opponents into submission. :)

I do think he went 1 year without losing a match from after the world cup in 2000 to the next world cup in 2001. I might have the year wrong. But I think he did go a year without losing a match.
 
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That is true Carl. He was not beaten in singles event from the year 2000-2001. Like you said, the kind of power that he generated back then was unseen and unheard of. Like you said, he beat up his opponents into submissions, including his coach now Liu Guoliang (Swedish Open 2001 QF 4-2. He went on to beat Oh Sang Eun in SF and Ryu Seung Min in the finals). His inside out FH was legendary.
 
says Spin and more spin.
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The greatest to me has to be the great Viktor Barna. But in modern table tennis era, it's wang Liqin. You guys can read about it on my thread : http://www.tabletennisdaily.co.uk/f...ngest-number-1-player-maybe&highlight=longest

Thanks for posting that link to the this thread on Victor Barna Azlan.

Nobody in the modern era has surpassed Wang Liqin's 25 consecutive months as world #1. The ITTF world ranking history pages for Wang Liqin do not go back far enough to get the whole two years where he was ranked #1. I think it went from September of 2000 - September of 2002. But, he was also ranked #1 for all but 2 months between June of 2004 and February of 2007. If you just take the total # of months where he was ranked #1 and add them all together it is almost 5 years in the #1 slot. Hard to beat that in the modern era where, aside from his periods of dominance, the #1 rank seems to shift fairly regularly from one player to another.
 
says Spin and more spin.
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I think MAster Long will break all the tt records :).

Mas Long is definitely on track. Till this moment he was unbeaten in 40 consecutive matches.

I agree with both of you. Ma Long could end up becoming the best player ever. His main obstacles might be, Zhang Jike, Yan An and Fang Bo. Yan An and Fang Bo need work but have real potential. Zhang Jike has a little work to do to give Ma Long a better run for his money. But Zhang Jike has some aspects of the game that nobody else can compete with.

But that is not History. That is the future. Over the next few years, if Ma Long stays on track, He could end up winning everything over and over again for a long time. But sports are complicated. If he had not had an injury he might have already won the two big titles that Zhang Jike won this year. And that is just it. Things happen inside and outside the playing field that affect a person's play. Like, at the end of 2009 Wang Hao all of a sudden gained a ton of weight and got really badly out of shape and his level of play dropped drastically. That was not because of an injury and it was not because of anything that happened on the field of play or in training. There was something going on in his personal life. If that did not happen he might have broke the 25 consecutive months record.

However, we can say Ma Long has the best shot at smashing all the records. And that Wang Liqin was outrageously dominant when he was on top. 5 years worth of domination that is in the record books. He did it already. For now, the history books show that, when Wang Liqin was in his prime, he was the most dominant player in the modern era.
 
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