John Higgins compares Mark Williams defeat to boxing against Floyd Mayweather

John Higgins compared losing to Mark Williams to fighting undefeated boxing superstar Floyd Mayweather after his World Snooker Championship defeat.

The Welshman claimed a 13-7 second-round win with a brilliant performance against Higgins in the rematch of the 2018 final.

The wizard of Wishaw couldn’t lay a glove on his dominant opponent and he likened the experience to stepping into the ring with the US boxer.

“I didn’t play well enough,” Higgins admitted to the BBC. “Mark is the best-shot maker in the game and it must be like fighting Floyd Mayweather because he’s just so clever.

“You can’t really open the balls up because he can pot them as good as anyone and that must be what it is like.

“He was hitting me with jabs all through that match and it left me a little bit confused for most of the game.”

Higgins made an excellent start to the match at the Crucible and raced to a two frame lead in the opening session.

But the relentless Williams responded by winning seven frames in a row to gain a comfortable lead and Higgins never recovered.

He said: “I played okay at the start and he gave me a couple of chances at 3-1 but I never took them and the game just got away from me.

“It was a pretty bad tournament and I never played well enough during any point of it so it’s really disappointing.

The 45 year-old had a fantastic opportunity to record a 147 break during the 14th frame.

Higgins made a break of 113 but he missed a difficult black ball after potting all the reds to fall short of repeating his previous maximum at the Crucible.

“I was disappointed with that because I thought I had a good chance of doing that. It must be because of the fans that I never managed it, Higgins joked.

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