marty mauser will probably become the most famous ping pong player in the world but nobody knew who marty reisman was, and for very good reason

I'm really hyped to see marty supreme and I know obviously it's more about the wild shit chalamet does in it but the ball knower in me knows that the real life reisman was a fraud who could never shut up about how cucked he was by the sport he played evolving and kept a lifelong dumb resentful grudge about it, and for like a decade there was one tiny but dedicated faction in American table tennis who was convinced that he really could've been the GOAT if some scrawny Japanese dude didn't come up with the revolutionary idea to put sponge on his bat in 1952. his life was cool but he was a bitch as he grew older so that's why I'm writing this post at 10:50pm the day before it releases in theatres

the movie probably won't go into this but up until he died, and then some years later, there existed a hagiography of him in American table tennis circles based on the supposedly legendary playing attributes of this guy, and also because there existed this circle of rabid autists (uncool ones who aren't like me btw) who would bitch bitch bitch and moan maybe how the addition of sponge changed and ruined the game and brought it to aesthetic perdition and somehow also was the reason why it got doomed to irrelevance in America. no more graceful chopping rallies or thinking duels but just speed and spin, ugh! marty was like a patron saint to these guys, the people who who were nostalgic for (or often idolized that period of table tennis because they lacked the skillset to be good in today's game) the hardbat era, the era of spongeless table tennis, the era marty thrived in, the era where Marty would've been GOAT if it wasn't for that inscrutable oriental dork who VIOLATED the sanctity of the game by adding the evil ass commie sponge

he spent his life believing this cope and only dominating local and national hardbat tournaments (because even as dorky as most Americans who play table tennis are 90% of them have never touched a hardbat once they discovered how to get good at pong), somewhere along the way he met susan sarandon and the safdie's brothers dad, and then he died. and because of this 13 years later we have Marty Supreme and his good name is finally redeemed and honoured, right?

Reisman didn't win anything but open tournaments in the hardbat era he wasn't gonna be the goat

he won a bunch of bronzes at the world championships and that's like, the apex of his career, and he lost 3 games to nothing in the only singles medal match he ever played! I mean he was 19 so he could've had potential to be a world champion, but that means he would've been world champion in an objectively shittier and boring and less skillful era lmao

he wasn't even the best american in his era! his teammate richard miles was and won a bronze singles medal 7 years after they started playing with sponges and marty ragequited from the sport for good lol

I mean his criminal shit was probably real they've arrested and convicted like at least 4 track stars for drug smuggling

anyways back to the point about ball knowledge: the idea that the game regressed because of the invention of the sponge is laughable. Marty regressed. The best table tennis players alive play now, the game's gone under so much study, formal process, coaching, analyctics, sports science, equipment availability that we know which techniques generate the most power and spin, which strategies and which mindsets separate you from greatness and mediocrity, the top players in the world all have personal trainers and regimens and psychologist sessions. the sponge was an innovation and it led to the most beautiful and perfect table tennis being played today, which the hardbat game could've never facilitated 🥱 and it's too bad marty was too much of a fucking dinosaur to embrace it. Marty was a twink, Patrick Franziska is 6'3 190 and too jacked to be playing this sport. too bad america sucks ass at it but skill issue + learn chinese buddy

anyhow if you gave prime ma long a hardbat racket and put him against prime reisman ma long clears 4-0