Michael van Gerwen says Peter Wright should retire after his emphatic defeat in the second round of the PDC World Championship.
Two-time world champion Wright won just two legs and averaged below 80 as he was surprisingly beaten by debutant Arno Merk on Tuesday.
Van Gerwen, who has won the world title three times, said he was “not surprised by [Wright’s] performance” given the Scotsman’s inconsistent recent record and “it’s time for him to retire anyway”.
The 36-year-old Dutchman beat William O’Connor to reach the third round at Alexandra Palace.
Another two-time world champion, Gary Anderson, said players cannot play well all the time and that Wright is having a “blip”.
“We can’t play well all the time. People think we are robots and you have just got to play well all the time or [after] a bad couple of games it’s ‘he’s finished, he’s retiring’,” said Anderson.
“Just give folk a break. We can’t keep doing that day in and day out. We’ve seen Michael van Gerwen do that for probably the last decade. He has a blip and it’s ‘that’s it, he’s finished’.”
Wright, who became world champion in 2020 and 2022, has not made it past the quarter-finals of any televised ranking tournament in the past two years.
The 55-year-old last won a European Tour event in 2024 and a Players Championship in 2022.
Wright was not selected for the 2025 Premier League Darts season and failed to qualify for the Grand Slam of Darts for the first time since 2012.
The Dutchman’s comments follow Wright’s recent suggestion that Van Gerwen’s “vision is probably going”, external.