Phil Taylor
Peter Wright
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Phil Taylor leads 5 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Phil Taylor at #1 and Peter Wright at #10.
The case for Phil Taylor
The most dominant athlete any professional sport has produced. Taylor won 16 world championships — two BDO in 1990 and 1992, then fourteen PDC including eight consecutively from 1995 to 2002 — from 21 world finals, and added 16 World Matchplay titles and six Premier Leagues among more than 80 televised majors and over 200 professional titles in total. He hit 11 televised nine-dart finishes, including two in the same match in the 2010 Premier League final against James Wade, a feat nobody else has come close to repeating. Backed as a young apprentice by Eric Bristow, he beat his mentor 6-1 in the 1990 world final and then rebuilt the standard of the sport around himself, dragging televised averages from the 90s into the 100s. He was still reaching world finals at 57, losing to Rob Cross in 2018 in his final match before retirement. Every metric the sport records, he holds or once held.
The case for Peter Wright
The sport's most visually extravagant champion and the outstanding example of late-career transformation. Snakebite spent two decades as a journeyman, dropped off the circuit entirely to work outside the game, and returned in his forties with dyed mohican, painted snake and a wardrobe designed by his wife. He lost the 2014 world final to Michael van Gerwen, then won the title in 2020 at 49 by beating van Gerwen 7-3, and again in 2022 against Michael Smith. Three world finals, two titles, plus the 2019 World Matchplay and the 2017 UK Open among more than eight televised majors, and a spell at world number one. He is also the sport's most restless technician, changing darts, stems and flights mid-match and carrying dozens of setups to every event — the opposite of the received wisdom that a professional should find one dart and never change it.