James Wade issued a heartfelt apology for his celebration that drew criticism at the 2019 PDC World Darts Championship.
Wade qualified as the eighth seed and progressed straight through to the second round for a clash against Japanese star Seigo Asada.
After winning the second set of his 3-2 victory, he shouted towards Asada before revealing his intentions for the wild celebration.
“I kept giving it to him,” Wade told Sky Sports. “I wanted to hurt him, I wanted to really hurt him in his face.
“It weren’t a great game, but I wanted to hurt him and I wanted to progress. That was for my son and also for a bit of the UK.”
Former darts player Wayne Mardle was a pundit for Sky Sports and said Wade was being intimidating with his ‘thuggish behaviour’.
“Does he mean he wanted to punch him in his face? What does he mean? I’m absolutely lost for words,” he said via The Guardian.
“That’s just not on. The intimidation, overly aggressive, I hope he wakes up in the morning and thinks, ‘I’ve made a mistake there.’
“He can’t think that’s right and no one watching it can think it’s right. That’s thuggish behaviour, there’s no place in darts for that.”
Wade apologised to Asada on social media, saying: “I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologise for my actions last night.
“Seigo Asada is a great player and I would like to say sorry to him, the fans and the PDC.
“Anyone that has followed my professional career will know that this was very out of character for me and I am disappointed in myself with the way I acted both on the stage and in my interviews after the match.
“I was fighting a battle with myself before I even got on the stage due to a hypomania episode which can happen to me at any time and no one is more upset than I am about what happened.
“I would like to again apologise and hope that people can understand how remorseful I am.”
Wade was subsequently given a £5,000 fine by the Darts Regulation Authority [DRA] for the incident.
However, speaking to the Metro in 2019, he said the DRA didn’t consider his mental health issues after refusing to see a psychiatrist.
“I got fined for it, I got fined £5,000 for it,” he said. “They didn’t take into consideration my mental illness or anything, because I didn’t go and see a psychiatrist because I refused to go and see one.
“Every time I go and see one it’s brought up again, I’ve had six years of seeing psychiatrists and I’m sick of it, I don’t want to do it.
“It wasn’t taken into consideration because I had to prove that I have bipolar and ADHD. They know I do, but they wanted me to prove it.
“I’ve had so many tests and loads of s*** and I won’t do it, I’d rather just take the £5,000 fine and hopefully one day they’ll get bored of me.
“Hopefully they don’t do it to anyone else because there are other people in darts who have got problems but they don’t talk about it. I talk about it to try and help people.
“It’s really important, because now I’m fine, but if I’m having a funny five minutes I can’t deal with social situations and it needs to be understood. Because you haven’t got a plaster cast or a scar, it’s not recognised by a lot of people.”
Wade later spoke on the aftermath on William Hill’s Up Front podcast with talkSPORT pundit Simon Jordan.
“After the incident, everyone jumped on the bandwagon and I was called a racist, a bully, a thug, all these things,” Wade said.
“On that night I jumped around, shouted unintentionally in his face, and it was just unfortunate that he was standing where he was; I was unlucky there.
“I was backed up by Laura Woods because she said to hang on and see what I had to say, and I just came out with something that didn’t even make sense and was out of character for me.
“But people had been asked by trained professionals to not put a camera in front of my face right after the game because I needed time to calm down, and it wasn’t helpful for me when they put a camera straight in my face.
“I was being judged as a guy that had just gone up there and been nasty, but that’s not what it was, I wasn’t very well and you do go through stages where you aren’t quite right, and no one took that into account. I wasn’t helped, I wasn’t backed.
“I was just made to stand in front of a board and be told I was this and that and made to face the full consequence, even though everyone had been given professional opinions from trained people that it was what’s called a manic phase, it was unfair.”
Wade reached the fourth round of the 2019 World Championship but was beaten by Ryan Joyce.
