There’s no way Schmidt would fake this. He’s been trying for years to break the record. If you’ve got multiple 400+ runs on tight 9 footers, there’s no way you decide 526 on a very loose 8 footer is insurmountable and you give up trying and decide to fake it.
We haven’t even seen the video yet, but because it’s exactly 100 balls over Mosconi, it’s automatically a fake? Come on. If you were going to fake it, you’d choose a random number, not exactly 100 more. The number probably got in his head and distracted him.
If the video comes out and it’s highly edited then sure, people are always gonna object to an edited video for a world record and make accusations, but the damn video isn’t even out yet.