Cool story. He captured the moment well. Monk was a huge underdog in the match with Sigel, especially since they moved it to a 9' table. After he made the final nine ball on the break, he actually fainted and fell to the floor.
What was really funny was that when Monk got down to shoot the long cut shot on the nine, it got deathly quiet in the room, with well over 500 people watching. Monk stood up, looked around and said, "It's too quiet in here." Everyone laughed. I think that calmed Monk down. Because then he got back down and made it.
One of the most amazing rolls I ever saw was when Sigel played back and forth position from the eight to the nine ball to win the match. The cue ball just kept rolling and corner hooked Mike on the point of the side pocket. He made a great safety, half masse'ing the cue ball to hit the edge of the nine ball and leave it very tough with distance.
Monk actually won $27,500 because there was a bonus pot that you had to pay $50 extra to get into. And Sigel got $11,000. There were no deals made in this final. Sigel was too big a favorite. Thirty years ago we had pay outs like this in pro pool thanks to Richie Florence. He followed this event with another one at the Tropicana the following year that Edgar "Shake 'N Bake" White won, beating "Little Al" Romero in the finals.
Then Richie went to Caesars and put on several more big money events, with first prizes in excess of 30K. What happened you might ask? Well, several of the top players in a moment of temporary insanity refused to sign the television releases (standard form for all athletes) and that put Richie out of business. Geniuses!
This final event was held at Caesars Palace in 1984 and Strickland won (25K) beating Terry Bell (12.5K) in the finals. Dallas West was third (7.5K) and I was the TD. The shows never aired on ESPN and Richie never put on another tournament. He put pro pool on national television (ESPN) and paid out top dollar prizes over twenty five years ago. Until the players put themselves out of business. By the way, Richie was NOT paying ESPN any production costs to put these shows on the air. It was all being done on their dime. I sat with Richie at the meeting where he made the deal to put these shows on TV. He was a darn good promoter and negotiator. He also had Budweiser and Caesars kicking in to the purse, over 30K added for each event.
I just thought you might like to know this little bit of background information. Pool had a great opportunity on television right here in the states a long, long time ago. But thanks to some "smart" thinking by pool players it all went up in a puff of smoke.
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