Legends of the Cue
"Legends of the Cue" is a cue sports history podcast featuring interviews with notable players, promoters, administrators and other people of influence in and around cue sports. We also plan to highlight memorable brands, events and venues. Focusing on the positive aspects of the sport, we aim to create and provide an engaging and timeless repository of content that listeners can enjoy now and forever. Co-hosted by WPA and BCA Hall of Fame member Allison Fisher, Mosconi Cup player and captain Mark Wilson, our podcast focuses on telling the life stories of cue sport’s greatest, in their voices. Join Allison, Mark and Mike Gonzalez for “Legends of the Cue.”
Episodes
128 episodes
Darren Appleton - Part 3 (Inside the Mosconi Cup—Leadership, Rivalry and Team Europe)
Few players have embodied the emotion of the Mosconi Cup like Darren Appleton. In Part 3 of his Legends of the Cue interview, the European pool icon goes inside the team room, the arena and the pressure cooker that transformed the annu...
Darren Appleton - Part 2 (Reinventing a Champion—From English 8-Ball to World 10-Ball Glory)
Darren Appleton’s rise was anything but gradual. In Part 2 of this Legends of the Cue interview, “Dynamite” recalls winning the first professional tournament he entered, developing one of pool’s most admired cue deliveries and making t...
Darren Appleton - Part 1 (From Pontefract to Professional Pool—The Making of “Dynamite”)
Before Darren “Dynamite” Appleton became a multiple world champion and BCA Hall of Famer, he was a fiercely competitive kid growing up on a council estate in Pontefract, West Yorkshire. In Part 1 of this five-part Legends of the Cue in...
Alan McManus - Part 6 (The Future of Snooker, Pool vs. Snooker, and Alli’s Rapid Rack)
The sixth and final part of our Legends of the Cue interview with Alan “Angles” McManus looks forward as much as it looks back. After tracing Alan’s journey from Glasgow schoolboy to Masters champion, Crucible semi-finalist, commentato...
Alan McManus - Part 5 (From Professional Snooker Player to Commentator, Analyst, and Podcaster)
In Part 5 of our Legends of the Cue conversation with Alan McManus, we follow his transition from the professional arena to the commentary box, the television studio, and the world of podcasting.After more than three decades as ...
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Alan McManus - Part 4 (Beating Stephen Hendry, Winning the Masters, and Crucible Memories)
Part 4 of our Alan McManus series brings us to the championship heart of his career: the 1994 Masters at Wembley, the famous final against Stephen Hendry, and the long arc of a professional snooker life lived at the highest level.Alan ta...
Alan McManus - Part 3 (Steve Davis, Jimmy White, Technique, Talent, and the Rise of “Angles”)
Part 3 of our Legends of the Cue series with Alan “Angles” McManus explores the influences, techniques, rivalries, and self-awareness that helped define his rise in professional snooker.Alan looks back on Steve Davis as the mode...
Alan McManus - Part 2 (Pool Rooms, Road Players, Turning Pro, and the Discipline of Safety)
In Part 2 of our Legends of the Cue interview with Alan McManus, the conversation moves from Glasgow snooker halls to New York pool rooms, from schoolboy promise to professional ambition, and from natural ability to the hard-earned cra...
Alan McManus - Part 1 (Glasgow Beginnings, “Angles,” and the Making of a Snooker Mind)
In Part 1 of our extended Legends of the Cue conversation with Scottish snooker great Alan “Angles” McManus, we begin where every cue-sports life story should begin: at the first table, with the first cue, and with the first signs that...
Jorgen Sandman - Part 6 (A Pool Player with a Dream: on Survival, Service, and Legacy)
The final chapter of Jorgen Sandman’s Legends of the Cue interview brings together the personal and the historic: a lifetime of service to pool, a near-death experience, a renewed commitment to the WPA, and a simple answer to how he wa...
Jorgen Sandman - Part 5 (The Olympic Dream: World Games, Brisbane, and Pool’s Global Future)
Can pool become an Olympic sport? In this fifth episode of Legends of the Cue, Jorgen Sandman offers one of the clearest explanations you will hear of where billiards sports stand in the Olympic movement, what still has to happen, and ...
Jorgen Sandman - Part 4 The Alphabet Soup of Cue Sports: How Billiards Reached the Olympic Family)
Pool fans know eight-ball, nine-ball, ten-ball, and straight pool. But behind the games themselves is a complex world of federations, Olympic recognition, acronyms, politics, and diplomacy. In this fourth episode of Legends of the Cue,...
Jorgen Sandman - Part 3 (Building World Pool: The WPA, America, and the Junior Pipeline)
In this powerful third episode of Legends of the Cue, Jorgen Sandman pulls back the curtain on the creation of the World Pool-Billiard Association, the importance of American participation, and the youth development systems that helped...
Jorgen Sandman - Part 2 ("Learning by Doing": Teaching Pool, Running Rooms, and Selling the Sport)
Before Jorgen Sandman became one of the most influential administrators in world pool, he was first a student, teacher, pool room operator, promoter, and believer in the power of simply getting started. In this second episode of Legends of ...
Jorgen Sandman - Part 1 (From Swedish Ice Hockey to the Pool Hall Door)
Jorgen Sandman’s extraordinary life in cue sports begins far from the bright lights of world championships and Olympic committees. In this opening episode of Legends of the Cue, Jorgen takes us back to Sundsvall, Sweden, where a childh...
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Jeanette Lee - Part 9 (Hall of Fame Reflections, Pool Legacy, and Life Beyond the Table)
In the final chapter of our conversation on Legends of the Cue, Jeanette “The Black Widow” Lee reflects on legacy, recognition, and what it all means after a life spent chasing excellence in pool. This episode shifts from the climb to ...
Jeanette Lee - Part 8 (Efren Reyes, Global Fame, and the Making of The Black Widow)
In this penultimate episode of her Legends of the Cue interview, Jeanette Lee shares the stories that transformed her from champion pool player into one of the most famous figures in cue sports history. The conversation begins with her...
Jeanette Lee - Part 7 (Allison Fisher Arrives, Women’s Pool on ESPN, and a World Games Gold Medal)
In this episode of Legends of the Cue, Jeanette “The Black Widow” Lee opens up about one of the defining rivalries in women’s pool history: her battle with Hall of Famer Allison Fisher. With both legends on the show together, the conve...
Jeanette Lee - Part 6 (The WPBA, 1994 Breakthrough, and the First Mosconi Cup)
In this sixth episode of our interview, Hall of Fame pool legend Jeanette “The Black Widow” Lee takes us inside one of the most important turning points of her career: the moment she arrived on the professional scene and changed women’s pool fo...
Jeanette Lee - Part 5 (Becoming The Black Widow)
In the fifth installment of our conversation with Jeanette Lee, the legend begins to take shape. This is the chapter where the player becomes the persona, and Jeanette explains how “The Black Widow” was born — not as a carefully engineered bran...
Jeanette Lee - Part 4 (The Grind, the Mentors, and the Making of a Champion)
Part 4 is where talent meets discipline. Jeanette takes us inside the all-consuming years when pool became her life and improvement became an obsession. She talks about the players, rooms, and routines that shaped her game, including the influe...
Jeanette Lee - Part 3 (Falling in Love with Pool)
In Part 3, the story turns toward the game that changed Jeanette Lee’s life forever. After a difficult and unsettled youth, Jeanette discovers pool and is instantly captivated. What begins as fascination quickly becomes obsession. She describes...
Jeanette Lee - Part 2 (Rebellion, Reinvention, and a Mind That Never Quit)
Part 2 of our visit with Jeanette Lee dives deeper into the turbulent teenage years that helped forge her identity. As Jeanette tells it, this was a time of rebellion, running away, surviving on instinct, and trying to make sense of a life that...
Jeanette Lee - Part 1 (Brooklyn, Belonging, and the First Battles)
In Part 1 of our conversation with Hall of Fame champion Jeanette “The Black Widow” Lee, we begin where all great life stories begin: at the very start. Jeanette takes us back to her childhood in Brooklyn, where she grew up as a Korean girl in ...
100th Episode Show - Part 2 (The Stories That Built Cue Sports)
In Part 2 of the Legends of the Cue 100th Episode Special, Mike Gonzalez, Allison Fisher, and Mark Wilson continue their celebration of the podcast’s first 100 episodes by focusing on what makes cue sports history so powerful: the storie...
