Wu Yize was crowned the 2026 world champion on Monday night (Image: Getty)
Ronnie O’Sullivan will be delighted that Wu Yize has joined him as a fellow World Snooker Championship winner. The Chinese talent, on just his third ever appearance at the Crucible, defeated Shaun Murphy 18-17 in a dramatic deciding frame in the final on Monday night to claim the £500,000 top prize. He becomes just the 30th different player ever to win the World Championship, which began in 1927.
Wu led 10-7 overnight but saw his advantage trimmed to 13-12 before the final session. Yet Murphy did not lead the match all evening as the pair ultimately went to an epic decider which Wu won 85-8. And it comes after O’Sullivan revealed last week that he has been mentoring the 22-year-old potter from Lanzhou. The seven-time world champion said that he’s happy to see the new world No.4 win tournaments, having only recently predicted his younger rival would soon lift the World Championship trophy.
O’Sullivan said: “I’d help any player. I help players I like. If I think they’ve got potential and I think I could guide him in the right way. A bit like what Ray [Reardon] done for me. With Wu Yize. I said: ‘I think you need to improve in this area.
“‘I’m convinced of that, if you don’t, I’m convinced you’re just going to keep getting what you got.’ Do you want to be a champion? And he [Wu] was like: ‘Yeah, yeah.’
“‘You might not want to do this, but if you want to be a champion, you’re going to have to do this no matter how good you are,’ because he’s a phenomenal talent.
“It’s been nice to see him take that on board and whether it’s helped him or not, I don’t know, but when he wins and does well, it makes me happy. If I felt like I could add that to a player, I would.”
O’Sullivan only predicted in February that Wu would soon be the king of the Crucible. The Rocket said: “I think Wu Yize is going to be world No.1 in the next three years, definitely world champion very soon. Phenomenal snooker player.
Ronnie O’Sullivan is a big fan of Wu Yize (Image: Getty)
Wu Yize is China’s second successive snooker world champion (Image: Getty)
“A lot of people liken him to Paul Hunter, but I think he’s more like a modern-day Steve Davis. He’s more dynamic, he has more cue power, more scoring power. But his positional play, for me, it’s on the level of Steve Davis.
“Everything goes in the middle of the hole. I practised with him for two or three days in Hong Kong not long ago, and it’s not until you practise with someone you can appreciate how good [they] are. After two days, I thought, ‘This kid’s really special.’
“I’d love to see him go and fulfil his potential as a professional. He’s only 22. I expect him to do a lot of great things in snooker. It’s important to have players you want to watch. I would watch him all day long.”
Wu has long been thought of as a future superstar and had reached three ranking event finals before this one. He was also a Masters semi-finalist on debut.
En route to World Championship glory, Wu also saw off Lei Peifan, four-time world champion Mark Selby, Hossein Vafaei and Mark Allen before getting the better of 2005 world champion Murphy.
The World Championship is only the second ranking title of the Chinese player’s career after he beat John Higgins to win the International Championship in Nanjing last year. That took him into the top 16 of the world rankings for the first time in his career. He will now rise into fourth, joining his compatriot Zhao Xintong – who is No.3 – in the top four.