Topics: Darts, World Darts Championship
Phil Taylor has named the three darts legends that would have been perfectly suited to playing in the Premier League.
The 2025 Premier League continues on Thursday with week two of the event, which is being held in Glasgow.
World number one Luke Humphries won week one after a 6-1 victory over Chris Dobey in the final.
Reigning world champion Luke Littler will open proceedings against Rob Cross, who has already won two titles this season including Monday's Players Championship 1 event in Wigan.
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Seven-time Premier League winner Michael van Gerwen, meanwhile, takes on the in-form Stephen Bunting.
No other darts player has been as successful as Van Gerwen in the non-ranking event, though he only reached the semi-finals last season before losing to Humphries.
The event debuted in 2005, with six competitors and a wildcard playing each other twice over matches consisting of 12 legs.
Taylor, Colin Lloyd, John Part and Peter Manley were among the top stars playing in the first edition, with the likes of Raymond van Barneveld, Dennis Priestley and James Wade joining the group in subsequent years.
The Premier League, though, didn't exist for most of Taylor's time in darts - meaning some of his great rivals from his earlier years never got to experience it.
Speaking exclusively to SPORTbible, Taylor named the three players - other than himself - from darts past that he believes would be ideal for a Premier League competition.
He said: "I'd love to have seen Eric Bristow in it, in his heyday.
"John Lowe would be in it. How about people when they played at their best - Jocky Wilson would be one. Because he'd put a smile on your face."
Bristow was Taylor's mentor when he first entered professional darts, having been a five-time BDO world champion between 1980 and 1986.
'The Crafty Cockney' began to suffer from dartitis in the late 1980s but still reached the world final every year until 1991, where he lost 6-0 to Dennis Priestley. He died of a heart attack aged 60 in 2018.
Lowe, meanwhile, was a three-time world champion in 1979, 1987 and 1993 and was the first player to hit a televised nine-darter.
He continued playing professionally until the age of 62 until his retirement in 2007, and played in the inaugural season of World Seniors Darts in 2022.
Wilson, meanwhile, is regarded as one of Scotland's greatest ever sportspeople, and dominated darts alongside Bristow and Lowe in the 1980s.
He won two world titles in 1982 and 1989 and, alongside Bristow, Lowe, Taylor and several other top players, was part of the BDO breakaway to form the PDC in 1993.
He died in 2012 aged 62, having been diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and diabetes in previous years.
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