Former darts player Paul Nicholson has opened up about his stormy rivalry with Phil Taylor and believes he was "hated" by the 16-time world champion at one stage.

Taylor was dominating darts at the start of the 2010s, with no one seemingly able to cut off The Power. Nicholson proved to be a rare, albeit brief, exception. The Asset defeated Taylor in two televised tournaments in quick succession in 2011. After one of those victories, at the UK Open, Nicholson infamously waved Taylor off. At the time, he denied the gesture was aimed at his rival, but recently conceded he did intend to give the darts icon a ‘send off’.

“In that moment, I had double eight with three darts [to win], I knew I was hitting it. I did think ‘what am I going to do to make this a moment?’ because that’s what sportspeople do,” he told the Darts Show Podcast.

“The Ronaldos, the Tiger Woods, they have ‘moments’. That was my moment. I thought ‘I’m going to win this and people are going to remember it’. I’m going to take the lie away from it now. I told Dave Clark [of Sky Sports] a lie at the time [when asked about the wave in an interview], but I did wave him off. I thought ‘I’m going to make this about me, this is not about you, this is about me’.

“I waved at him, then I high fived someone in the crowd, then I walked over and shook his hand. And he hated me. I thought ‘you can hate me all you want, but I’m the one going through to the quarters.”

He added: “For a small period of 2011 there was some genuine animosity between us. It wasn’t on my part because I was the one who was beating him. I’d beaten him in two televised events by the odd leg. He didn’t like the fact I’d beaten him. They were very costly defeats for him because, at the time, has at his height, borderline unbeatable.”

Nicholson also recalled the mind games Taylor used to play in the build-up to matches and felt some players were beaten before they even got to the oche.

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“At the time, was I influenced by hate towards him? No. Did I want to take him out? Absolutely. I saw too many players who just felt scared around him. I’m like ‘what you scared of? I’m going to give it a go,” said Nicholson, now a darts commentator.

“He tried every trick in the book to beat me. Not on the oche because, on the oche, he was always as straight as an arrow. But beforehand he would try and make eye contact with you, he would jab you in the ribs and try and tell you a little story beforehand to try and get in here [his head]. All the stuff Eric Bristow taught him. I admired the fact he was trying to get to me mentally, but he couldn’t crack me, mentally. That stuck with him a little bit.”

However, tensions between the pair eventually eased and Nicholson also spoke of his respect for the most successful player in the sport’s history. And in an interview with former footballer Robbie Savage, Taylor once said: “I got to the stage where I wanted to strangle him. He was pushing the right buttons at times. But he’s all right, Paul, once you get to know him.”

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