Furious Ping Pong Rivalry Enters Sixth Year, Rival Still Unaware
An article about Shalva "Shako" Beridze · Filed under: Sport, One-Sided · Ping Pong
Every great competitor is defined by a great rival. Shalva “Shako” Beridze is no exception. His rivalry has run for six years, spans three venues, and has produced what he calls “some of the most important matches never played.”1
The rival has been contacted for comment. The rival asked who Shako was.
Origins
The feud began, as feuds do, with a small slight. At a company event, a colleague — hereafter the Rival — reportedly picked up a paddle, played four points, said “yeah, I used to play a bit,” and put the paddle back down.
Shako has never recovered from this.
“I used to play a bit,” he has been heard repeating, in isolation, at intervals, in the tone of a man reading a threat aloud.[citation needed]
The matches that never happened
In the years since, Shako has proposed a decisive encounter on at least fourteen occasions. The Rival has never declined. The Rival has also never accepted.
Shako maintains a mental record of these encounters. The record, he says, stands at 9–5 in his favour. Asked how a match that has not been played can produce a score, he explained that he simulates them, which he described as “modelling,” a word he pronounced with the confidence of a man who has read the first paragraph of an article about it.2
The bus stop incident
Complicating matters is a widely circulated report that the Rival Shako has been describing for the past two years is not, in fact, the original colleague, but a different man he once saw at a bus stop holding a sports bag.
Shako denies this. He does concede that the Rival’s face has “evolved.”
Prognosis
The rivalry shows no sign of cooling. Shako continues to train for it at 3 a.m. He continues to prepare remarks for the eventual handshake. He has, on his own account, already decided what he will say when he wins.
The Rival, meanwhile, continues to have absolutely no idea that any of this is happening, which is — and this cannot be stressed enough — the strongest position anyone has ever held in a sporting feud.