Peter Wright is at the centre of a darting skirmish once again as Luke Humphries criticised the two-time world champion’s “mind games”.
The pair meet on Sunday evening in the last 16 of the PDC World Championship, with No 1 and reigning champion Humphries the clear favourite.
But Wright is hoping he can gain a psychological advantage over his opponent – and this is not the first time he’s employed this tactic.
Here’s everything Wright and Humphries have said as their so-called “war of words” escalates.
“What drives me on? Luke Humphries and Luke Littler because I know I can still compete with them,” Wright said before the World Championship. “Based on what I’m doing in practice, I can compete with these guys and be better than them.”
“People think, ‘Oh, he should be retiring, he should be going to the old gits’ thing’ (the seniors tour). No, I’m not ready for that yet. I’m ready to upset Luke Littler. I’m here to upset Luke Humphries.
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“I believe I can win it again. I won one of the European Tour events, beat Luke Littler in the final 8-5 and won six legs on the trot. You can overlook me if you like, I don’t care.”
This is fairly standard-issue bravado, but it forms part of a wider pattern of behaviour which has clearly rattled the mild-mannered Humphries.
When the pair faced during June’s World Cup of Darts, Wright said he was going to “smash up England” – his Scottish pairing lost 8-4 – before making another dig that Humphries’ shoulders must have hurt from carrying teammate Michael Smith.
And after beating Nick Kenny in the third round at Alexandra Palace, Humphries joined in with some digs of his own, pointing out his major titles record is similar to Wright’s despite being 25 years younger.
“He [Wright] has had a lot to say over the last couple of weeks, where he says he doesn’t fear me and Luke Littler,” the world No 1 said. “He says he’s going to smash us. But if I don’t fear someone I don’t keep mentioning them all the time.
“All the pressure’s on him now because if he doesn’t the egg’s on his face, not mine. How many times have people said this is going to happen and this is going to happen and it never happens?
“I think Peter loves to play the mind games but it don’t work with me. I’m one world title away from almost matching his career and I’m about 25 years younger. So I think one [more] world title would match everything he’s achieved in the game.
“I haven’t got there by other people having a little dig here and there, but it just gets me up for the contest a little bit more. If you trash talk someone like Peter has, he has to follow through with it, otherwise he will look the fool.”
While Wright has a long-standing reputation as darts’ answer to Neal Maupay, albeit far more successful, Humphries considers himself an ambassador for the game, so this feels somewhat out of character.
His reaction may appear outsize, but Wright’s public and private words have clearly got to him. The pair meet on Sunday evening for a place in the quarter-finals on New Year’s Day.
Wright, who has previously called darts “90 per cent mentality and 10 per cent practice”, has always made winding up opponents part of his game. As a 16-year-old, he took that too far, and was glassed in pub. He still has the scars 38 years on.
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But it’s crucial to understand this is part of what has made him a great player. In his 20s, Wright attempted to make a career in darts, competing at the 1995 BDO World Championship, but struggled to break through and gave up.
Over a decade later, he decided to return to the game, but with a new look and plan he had devised with his wife. He was now Peter “Snakebite” Wright, competing with technicolor mohicans and sequinned outfits. This is his stage persona, a character he plays to give this otherwise shy man the confidence and bluster he needs to compete.
In 2017, he told The Telegraph his own personality and Snakebite are “totally different”, saying “if you asked me to go play now, I’d probably be rubbish”.
And this has grated opponents repeatedly. Michael van Gerwen decried his “lack of respect”, while his future Scotland teammate Anderson told him to “keep his mouth shut”. He even used to bring his own board to tournaments as he couldn’t find a willing practice partner.
But it worked. Since 2017, he has won the World Championship twice, the World Matchplay, the UK Open, Masters and Players Championship finals, as well as reaching the final of every other ranking major.
His form has collapsed in the past two years, finishing bottom of the eight-player Premier League in 2023 and 2024, but in his two recent matches at Alexandra Palace, he has shown glimpses of a potential return to form.
Will Wright’s ‘mind games’ help him beat Humphries?
Of course, the chances are that Humphries will be right, and Wright will end up with “egg on his face”. Although the 54-year-old played well to beat Wesley Plaisier and Jermaine Wattimena, Humphries is an entirely different calibre of opposition.
While Wright did beat Littler earlier this year to win the German Darts Championship, his form has been generally poor, and he was suffering from a chest infection against Wattimena which left him feeling “like a zombie”.
All this makes Humphries the clear favourite – unless Wright has knocked him off balance more than he’s letting on.
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