Mao and Nixon play Ping Pong – Sports Bizarre
About this episode
In the early 1970s, with China and the United States locked in a Cold War struggle, it took Ping Pong to save the world.
With diplomatic ties severed between Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao, the US Table Tennis team were sent to China to mend relations. Things got off to a rough start when one member of the US team converted to Communism and two others played an imaginary game of table tennis in the street, almost starting a riot.
Titus O’Reily and Mick Molloy examine the rise of Table Tennis in China and how the US Table Tennis Championships were once kicked out of a venue by El Mongol, a not-so-famous wrestler.
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