Liang Wenbo will remain suspended from all snooker activity until August after he was convicted of an assault that occurred in July 2021.
The 35-year-old was said to have been captured on CCTV punching and kicking a woman in Sheffield city centre before dragging her to the floor. Liang plead guilty to the charge in February 2022 before he was fined £1,380 and given a 12-month community order at Sheffield magistrates' court on April 1.
"Despite this case being a matter outside of the sport itself, and the fact that it had been dealt with by a criminal court, the WPBSA decided that the case was so serious that there was a case for Liang to answer for breaches of the WPBSA Rules and his WSL players contract" read a statement from the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA).
"The basis for this is that Liang’s behaviour and subsequent conviction is conduct unbecoming of a sportsperson and brings the sport of snooker into disrepute." Liang's suspension (backdated to April 1) is due to expire on August 1 when he can once again return to the World Snooker Tour.
The Chinese national's initial suspension meant he was prevented from appearing in World Snooker Championship qualifiers. Although he looked on track to enter the tournament in the third qualifying round, Liang was forced to instead miss the competition.
In addition to the court-ordered fines, he has also been instructed to pay £1,000 toward the cost of the WPBSA's Independent Disciplinary Committee hearing. WPBSA chairman Jason Ferguson said he was "pleased the committee upheld this decision."
Louis Haigh, Labour MP for Sheffield Heeley, criticised the WPBSA judgement as "utterly pathetic," however. The Shadow Secretary of State for Transport called Liang's initial community order in April a "shockingly pathetic sentence" and shared more stern words this week.
"Liang Wenbo was filmed kicking a woman while she lay on the floor in the street," she wrote via Twitter. "He's just received a four month suspension from snooker after a finding that his behaviour was 'unbecoming of a sportsperson'. How utterly pathetic."
'The Firecracker' won the English Open in 2016 and collected the second of his two World Cup titles alongside Ding Junhui the following year. It was also around this time that he climbed to his highest ranking of 11th in the world, having since slipped down to 33rd.
