In the Chinese national table tennis team, someone has finally taken the initiative to stand up against unfairness! This time, Fan Zhendong expressed his dissatisfaction with the new WTT regulations on the surface, but in reality, he is challenging Liu Guoliang!
Unable to bear the new rule of being fined for not participating, Fan Zhendong chose to withdraw from the world rankings without retiring! What does Fan Zhendong's statement mean? It means that domestic competitions should still be played, but international competitions will not be played.
Why does Fan Zhendong want to withdraw from the international rankings? WTT is a game of capital, purely using the health of athletes to make money. The schedule is too dense, and there are penalties for not participating. This phenomenon is very unfair to athletes!
Why has WTT become a game of capital? Because WTT Chairman Liu Guoliang chose to treat athletes as cattle and horses. Under his promotion, the commercial nature of the WTT competition system points are higher than the nine major events, forcing athletes who want to stand out on the international stage to frequently participate and accept the exploitation of WTT.
If Liu Guoliang's only significant move was the reform of WTT, it might not have been enough to make Fan Zhendong decide to quit. However, what really caused Fan Zhendong to gradually take a different path from Liu Guoliang was actually the fan culture of the national table tennis team!
Everyone knows that the fan culture of the national table tennis team was led by Liu Guoliang. Liu Guoliang initially promoted the fan culture of the national table tennis team with the intention of promoting table tennis! After all, table tennis is a niche sport with limited commercial value worldwide; since it is difficult to reach offline, they turned to online and combined with the rise of short videos, conducting various topic marketing activities to create personal IPs for athletes and using these personal IPs to support the big IP of the national table tennis team!
After a series of operations, the national table tennis team quickly occupied the traffic market, and many national table tennis athletes also became internet celebrities through topic marketing; their image changed from the original "athlete" to "national idol"! And this change inevitably made the national table tennis team the most severely affected sports team in China's sports arena by the fan culture.
It is not difficult to judge from the public statements of athletes like Fan Zhendong that the mixed fan culture has brought a lot of trouble to many athletes; however, when the powerful fan culture brought a lot of traffic and attention to the national table tennis team, combined with the excellent results of the national table tennis team, they became the darlings of advertisers. It can be said that the commercial operation and monetization ability of the national table tennis team have become far ahead in China's sports arena. It is not difficult to understand why the most talked-about "Sha Tou" combination reappeared at the Mixed Doubles World Cup.
Regarding the impact of fan culture on China's sports arena, relevant authorities represented by the General Administration have ordered a crackdown in 2024. The Chinese Table Tennis Association also issued a statement in August to sever ties with fan culture. However, after the statement, no substantive measures appeared! The reason why the Chinese Table Tennis Association did not take any substantive measures against fan culture is simply because Liu Guoliang's efforts to build the national table tennis IP, as well as the commercial operation and monetization of the national table tennis team, and the wallets of all "participants" are closely related to fan culture; do you expect the top management of the Table Tennis Association, led by Liu Guoliang, to crack down on fan culture? Isn't that just attacking their own achievements and wallets? Where would they get the motivation?
The top management of the Table Tennis Association, led by Liu Guoliang, have this kind of behavior of saying one thing and doing another on the issue of fan culture, which to some extent also fosters certain unhealthy trends. During the Table Tennis Super League, fan culture returned, and this time athletes such as Fan Zhendong, Wang Chuqin, and Sun Yingsha all became "victims"; when our national table tennis players are constantly being rumored and subjected to cyberbullying, it indeed makes athletes like Fan Zhendong, who only want to focus on athletic performance, feel tired.
In fact, after the Olympics, Fan Zhendong had already shown intentions of retirement in front of the CCTV camera; so after the Olympics, everyone saw that he never returned to the national table tennis team, but only competed for the Shanghai team.
Considering that Fan Zhendong's immediate combat effectiveness is currently unparalleled, while Wang Chuqin and Lin Shidong's performances are far less stable than Fan Zhendong, all parties still hope that Fan Zhendong, who is at the peak of his career, can continue to carry the flag of the national table tennis team. Relevant parties have also been working hard to try to win back Fan Zhendong's heart.
The Singapore Grand Slam was once considered a turning point for Fan Zhendong. If he could return to compete, he would completely return to the national table tennis team, and the possibility of participating in the World Table Tennis Championships next would be great. If he did not return to compete, he would likely miss the World Table Tennis Championships and would not represent the national table tennis team in the future. The final result is that Fan Zhendong not only failed to enter the list of participants in the Singapore Grand Slam, but this time he openly declared his choice to withdraw from the world rankings, which basically announced that Fan Zhendong is breaking away from and declaring war on Liu Guoliang and the system he promotes. At the same time, it also announced that Fan Zhendong may completely say goodbye to the national table tennis team under Liu Guoliang's leadership!