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
107 episodes
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...
100th Episode Show - Part 1 (Preserving Pool History, One Story at a Time)
In this special milestone episode of Legends of the Cue, co-hosts Mike Gonzalez, Allison Fisher, and Mark Wilson look back on the first 100 episodes of their podcast and reflect on how a simple idea became a growing oral history o...
Mike Panozzo - Part 4 (Preserving Pool History and Imagining the Future of Cue Sports)
In the final part of our Legends of the Cue conversation with Mike Panozzo, we turn to history, legacy, media, governance and the future of professional pool. After more than four decades at Billiards Digest Magazine, Mik...
Mike Panozzo - Part 3 (Building Billiards Digest and Watching Pool Go Global)
In Part 3 of our Legends of the Cue interview with Mike Panozzo, the story moves from covering the game to owning one of its most important publications. By the mid-1990s, Mike and Keith Hamilton had purchased Billiards Diges...
Mike Panozzo - Part 2 (Minnesota Fats, Buddy Hall and The Color of Money Boom)
In Part 2 of our interview with Mike Panozzo, Legends of the Cue steps into the pool world of the early 1980s — a time when the billiard industry was struggling, professional pool was still searching for stability, and a young j...
Mike Panozzo - Part 1 (From Chicago Sports Pages to Billiards Digest)
In Part 1 of our conversation with Mike Panozzo, longtime Owner and Publisher of Billiards Digest Magazine, Legends of the Cue goes back to the beginning of one of cue sports’ most important storytellers.Mike grew ...
George Ashby - Part 4 (Still Playing, Still Remembering, Still George Ashby)
Part 4 brings our remarkable conversation with George Ashby to a thoughtful and deeply satisfying close. In this final episode, George reflects on the later chapters of his billiard life: returning to the game, staying connected to three-cushio...
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George Ashby - Part 3 (World Championships, Life Changes, and the Cost of Greatness)
In Part 3, George Ashby takes us deeper into the realities of life at the top of three-cushion billiards — and the very human struggles that can come with it. This chapter of his story spans world championships, national titles, international t...
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George Ashby - Part 2 (High Runs, Hard Lessons, and Chasing the World’s Best)
Part 2 of our conversation with George Ashby moves from the room to the arena, as George takes us inside the thought process, discipline, and competitive fire required to become a world-class three-cushion player. This is the episode where the ...
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George Ashby - Part 1 (From Jacksonville’s Drexel Billiards to the Art of Three-Cushion)
In Part 1 of our conversation with three-cushion billiard great George Ashby, we begin where all great cue sport stories begin: in the room. For George, that room was Drexel Billiards in Jacksonville, Illinois, the family business his father pu...
Justin Bergman - Part 4 (Mosconi Memories and Unfinished Business)
The final episode brings Justin Bergman’s story onto pool’s biggest stage. Here the focus turns fully to the Mosconi Cup years: the pressure, the personalities, the preparation, the heartbreak, the joy, and the chaos that can only happen when e...
Justin Bergman - Part 3 (Doing It His Way)
In Part 3, Justin Bergman opens up about something that has defined his entire career: he has never wanted to live like everybody else. Justin talks candidly about why pool appealed to him not just as a game, but as a way of life — a life outsi...
Justin Bergman - Part 2 (Action Rooms, Road Trips, and Junior Glory)
Part 2 follows Justin Bergman from gifted young player to feared road man, and it is packed with the kind of stories pool fans love. Justin talks about the pros and great players who passed through his orbit while he was still a kid, including ...
Justin Bergman - Part 1 (The Making of the “Iceberg”)
In this first installment with American pool star Justin Bergman, we go all the way back to the beginning. Justin shares what it was like growing up in Fairview Heights, Illinois, just outside St. Louis, in a family where pool quickly became mo...
John Schmidt w/Bob Keller - Part 5 (The Finish at 820: The Near Miss, the Nerve, and the Legacy)
The final episode brings the drama home. With the number climbing, the pressure building, and history within reach, John Schmidt and Bob Keller take us through the closing stages of the 820 run and the decisions that still linger in the mind af...
John Schmidt w/Bob Keller - Part 4 (How 820 Happens: Break Balls, Patterns, and Pure Straight Pool Genius)
In part four, the series shifts into the pure mechanics of greatness. This is where John Schmidt and Bob Keller begin unpacking the actual run in a way straight pool lovers will savor. They discuss break balls, key balls, rack patterns, cue-bal...
John Schmidt w/Bob Keller - Part 3 (The Mind of an 800 Ball Runner)
Part three gets inside John Schmidt’s head, and it may be the most revealing episode of the series. John talks candidly about self-doubt, aging, criticism, pride, and the internal switch he flips when it is time to chase a giant number. He expl...
John Schmidt w/Bob Keller - Part 2 (Inside the Setup: How John Schmidt Built the Perfect Straight Pool Storm)
What does it really take to run 820 balls? In part two, John Schmidt and Bob Keller pull back the curtain on the conditions, equipment, routines, and tiny details that made this historic straight pool run possible. This is the laboratory episod...
John Schmidt w/Bob Keller - Part 1 (The 820 Ball Run: Why He Came Back)
On this special five-part series of Legends of the Cue, we welcome straight pool great John Schmidt back to the show after his stunning 820-ball run, with Bob Keller joining us as the man behind the camera, the rack, and the support sy...
Shaun Murphy - Part 5 (Validation, Vulnerability, and the Legacy Still Being Written)
In the final installment of our five-part conversation with snooker great Shaun Murphy, the story turns deeply personal, powerfully honest, and wonderfully reflective. This is the chapter where victories, setbacks, self-doubt, and resilience al...
Shaun Murphy - Part 4 (The Crucible, the Comeback, and Life Beyond the Spotlight)
In Part 4 of our five-part conversation with snooker great Shaun Murphy, the story reaches one of its most dramatic and defining chapters: the 2005 World Championship. Shaun takes us inside the moment his career—and his life—changed forever, fr...
Shaun Murphy - Part 3 (No Plan B — Turning Pro, Triple Crowns, and the Art of Winning)
In Part 3 of our five-part conversation with snooker great Shaun Murphy, the story moves into the years when talent had to become a profession and ambition had to survive reality. Shaun reflects on the early certainty that snooker was never sim...
