ROCKET: SNOOKER COULD HAVE KILLED ME
RONNIE O’SULLIVAN has revealed the sport nearly KILLED him.
The mercurial Rocket has battled a tumultuous life on and off the green baize, but has stood firm to establish himself as the greatest player to ever pick up a cue.
And in a gripping fly-on-thewall documentary – Ronnie O’sullivan: The Edge of Everything – due out on Tuesday, he opens up about how he turned to booze and drugs as his life spiralled out of control. He also speaks candidly about his father, Ronnie Snr, being banged up for murder when he was just 16.
“I can’t f**king do this any more, it will kill me,” sobbed an emotional O’sullivan as he embraced his children after winning the 2022 Crucible crown. That win cemented his legacy as the game’s GOAT, levelling Stephen Hendry’s tally of seven Crucible titles.
“I don’t give a f**k any more because I’ve taken control of my life and the most important thing is I’m happy and I play snooker f**k’ – that’s how I’ve got with it because you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”
But despite the money and the fame, O’sullivan admitted he craved a “normal” life more than anything. “I always felt with my dad around that I was going to be all right,” added O’sullivan, who took his 1993 UK Championship trophy into prison to show his dad after he became the youngest ranking-event winner.
“Nothing could prepare you for that. After being sentenced, he looked up and he just said, to a f**king extremely high level enough of the time and win enough where I don’t give a f**k what anyone says,” admitted O’sullivan.
“I’m doing it my way. You should try doing it my way because it f**king ‘You should try doing
works. You’re it my way because
either slipping or it f**king
you’re winning works’
and the greatest player of all time – and then you’re slipping again and it’s, ‘Are his days numbered?’.
“I’ve heard it for 30 years, they’re always going to find a problem, so I just go, ‘You know what, f**k you, I don’t give a ‘Tell my boy to win’. I wasn’t very good at having all of this stuff locked inside me. A part of me was thinking, ‘F**k you, f**k this, f**k everything’. The healthiest thing for me to probably do was stop playing snooker, but I didn’t.
“I didn’t want to blame everything on that situation with my dad. But I’d rather have not gone through that and forget the snooker and just have whatever a normal life is.”
Ronnie O’sullivan: The Edge of Everything is available exclusively in cinemas across the UK & Ireland on Tuesday and launches on Prime Video on Thursday.