'O’Sullivan v Hendry like comparing Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson' - White weighs up the greatest

Ali is widely regarded as the greatest boxer of all time, while O’Sullivan’s five world championships, seven Masters and seven UK Championships gives him a record 19 triple crown titles.

With snooker postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic for the foreseeable future, Eurosport has announced a two-week celebration of snooker in its place, including a new vodcast shown on Eurosport 1 on Saturday at 2pm. Snooker fans will also be able to enjoy all nine episodes in full in audio form on a new podcast: The Break.

Speaking to Andy Goldstein and Neal Foulds about who was the greatest snooker player of all time, White was quick to plump for O’Sullivan.

He said: “Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry and Ronnie O’Sullivan are between them the best in the world but O’Sullivan is number one, no doubt about that. The other two are even.

“Steve Davis as an unbelievable snooker player, and Stephen Hendry took it to the next level, which I never thought would be done again, but then I saw Ronnie O’Sullivan come along and do that again.

He then compared O’Sullivan and Hendry's impact to the disruption caused in boxing by Ali and Mike Tyson.

“When you talk about Ronnie and Stephen, it’s like comparing Mohamed Ali and Mike Tyson. Obviously, between them they’ve won the most tournaments in the game," he said.

“In the 90s with Hendry, there weren’t that many players around so it was easier to dominate - and then all of a sudden, all these great players showed up, John Higgins, Mark Williams, Paul Hunter, and Ronnie still dominated, which is why I think Ronnie is the greatest player ever. I think Stephen Hendry would turn around and say O’Sullivan is the greatest of all time.”

White acknowledged that there were plenty of great players who were held back by the simple presence of O’Sullivan during their professional careers.

“We need to mention John Higgins and Mark Williams. They’ve won seven world titles between them, but just imagine if Ronnie O’Sullivan wasn’t around how many more tournaments they would have won?

“O’Sullivan has stopped them winning so many big Triple Crown events.”

White expects that Judd Trump will be the next of the modern crop to be considered a true great, given his exceptional 2019. He expects more to come from him.

“He’s the next person we’d put in that category. He’s won one world title, the masters and the UK Championship. He’s won more in one season this year than anyone has ever."

While Trump trails O’Sullivan, Hendry and Davis in number of titles won, White nevertheless expects him to narrow the gap over the course of the coming decade.

“He’s showing all the hallmarks for being a great great player. I expect we’ll be considering him as one of the greats in 10 years’ time.”

White also acknowledged another legendary figure, Alex Higgins, and explained the contradiction between his ‘Hurricane’ nickname and his surprisingly slow play.

“He was named ‘Hurricane’ Higgins after a newspaper journalist named him that after the ‘H’ in Higgins,” White recalled.

“But, he was very quick running round the table but on his actual shot he wasn’t quick at all – he was about 20 seconds. But because he ran around the table he looked fast.”