Not only was Prince a great musician he also liked to dabble in sports such as basketball and especially, ping pong. And by dabble I mean he kicked people’s asses in ping pong.
Remember, he once even took Michael Jackson to school in a game of table tennis, saying about Jacko, “Did you see that? He played like Helen Keller.”
Another famous person who Prince schooled in ping pong was Jimmy Fallon who recounted the wild story of his game with The Purple One.
One night when Prince was scheduled to appear on Fallon’s show they set up a ping pong table, but Prince never got around to playing. Fast forward to a little while later and Prince had Questlove deliver a message to Fallon that he wanted to play him in a game.
At the time Fallon had just had a baby, but obviously this was not a request he could turn down so they met at Susan Sarandon’s NYC ping-pong club, Spin.
As Fallon recalls, once he arrived he discovered Prince behind a curtain wearing a “double-breasted crushed blue velvet suit, holding a ping-pong paddle, and he goes, ‘You ready to do this?'”
Prince then proceeded to dominate Fallon, talking trash, and finishing him off with a winner that clipped the edge of the table. When Fallon bent down to retrieve the ball Prince was gone.
Added Questlove, “So that’s when I arrived, I came late… [Prince] was in the car already at the red light and I’m like, ‘Wait up, wait up!’ I run up to the car and, Grey Poupon-style, the window comes down. I said, ‘What happened, what happened?’ He says, ‘Ask your boy.'”
Amazing.
Obviously Prince had much better luck against Fallon than he did during his appearance on New Girl.
Dammit, we’re gonna miss that guy.