May 29, 2026 Nolan Hughes

Nine players will walk into Thunderbowl Lanes on June 13. Only one will emerge as champion in the AMF PBA World Championship.

Each finalist enters Strobl Arena with more than a major championship title to gain.

Some are looking to make PBA history, while others are in pursuit of personal glory and vindication.

The play-in stepladder begins Saturday, June 13 at 11 a.m. ET on CBS Sports Network, leading up to the championship round at 1 p.m. ET on CBS and Paramount+.

EJ Tackett

Earl Anthony twice won the PBA National Championship (which became the World Championship) three times in a row, Jason Couch tripled up in the TOC, and Jason Belmonte three-peated the Masters and World Championship.

But no player has won a major, or any tournament, four years in a row.

EJ Tackett has that opportunity in this year’s World Championship.

As the top seed, Tackett doubled in the 10th frame to defeat Belmonte in the 2023 title match, which PBA Commissioner Tom Clark described as the greatest match of all time.

In 2024, at Thunderbowl, Tackett climbed a stepladder featuring four left-handed players to win again.

Last year in Reno, Tackett again doubled in the 10th frame to defeat Belmonte.

A fourth straight World Champion win would all-but lock up a historic fourth straight Player of the Year nod, another feat that has never been done before in PBA history.

As Tackett told VIE magazine: “One game can change everything."

Chris Via

Every athlete has the same, unrelenting goal to be the best.

Achieving that goal is often objective: Win the game, win the match, win the tournament, win the championship, etc.

But there is more nuance to being the best than simply winning. More accurately, they are in pursuit of feeling like the best.

Chris Via has been the best. He has not yet felt like the best.

Via won the 2021 U.S. Open title wearing a mask during the pandemic. His mother, the chocolate chip connoisseur herself, watched on her phone from the parking lot.

His second PBA Tour title — a mixed doubles victory with close friend Bryanna Coté last summer — ended his half-decade title drought, but it did not come with the coveted satisfaction that has continued to evade him.

Wins on the bench, when your opponent comes up short, are wins. Wins, when you strike in the clutch or eviscerate your opponent, are better. Wins, when hundreds of psychotic fans chant your name, are better still.

A win against the best bowler on the planet for a major title inside one of bowling’s most iconic venues… what could be better than that?

Bill O’Neill

O’Neill, who was inducted into the PBA Hall of Fame last year, is in the legacy-building stage of his career.

Only 16 players in PBA Tour history have won at least four career major championships, and just three of them are active players: Belmonte, Tackett and Anthony Simonsen. 

O’Neill would join that illustrious trio with a World Championship win.

The Real Deal could elevate himself into even more rarefied air and cement his status as the one-hander who best adapted his game from the 2000s to the 2020s.

Kris Prather

As the spiritual successor to Mike Fagan, Prather boasts an eerily similar résumé to the King of Swing with six titles and two major wins.

Prather’s 2022 World Championship win made him title-eligible for the PBA Hall of Fame, and his 2020 TOC title proved he knows how to climb a major stepladder.

If Prather were to defeat another quartet of monsters to win another major, his Hall of Fame case would begin to look infallible.

Jason Belmonte

Belmonte’s recent performance in the shadow of Tackett’s brilliance over the past four seasons has started to color at least some people’s perception of the Australian.

These “struggles” are hilariously overblown. By just about any statistical measure, Belmonte has been the third-best player on tour over the past four seasons.

It’s true that a win would give Tackett six major titles in a four-year span. It’s also true that Belmonte has done that… twice.

Belmonte said after earning the top seed in last year’s World Championship, eclipsing Tackett in an 82-game marathon, that he is no longer in pursuit of being the best player in the world.

Instead, he said “I want to be the best of all time.”

Narratives, for better or worse, matter in GOAT conversations.

Personally ending Tackett’s four-peat — after twice being the runner-up — while winning his 16th career major title would be one hell of a narrative bump in Belmonte’s GOAT case.

Brandon Bonta

After clinching his berth in the World Championship, Bonta said he believed the Rookie of the Year race to be over. Alex Horton disagreed.

Horton inserted himself at the forefront of the top freshman conversation with a major title in the Tournament of Champions and a second title in the Shark Championship.

Bonta, of course, still has a compelling case for Rookie of the Year.

He ranks second in earnings and third in points among all players — not just rookies. He finished top eight in each of his four major appearances, including winning his perfect debut in the PBA Players Championship.

If Bonta were to climb the stepladder and, once again, defeat Tackett for a major title… forget Rookie of the Year.

Bonta would almost certainly become the first player to win Player and Rookie of the Year in the same season.

Zach Wilkins

Despite Tackett’s brilliance, there may not be a hotter player on tour than Wilkins.

Wilkins prevailed in the Roth/Holman Doubles Championship, led the TOC, then won the Scorpion Championship to become the first player this season to win multiple titles.

A third title of the season, and in a major championship, would separate Wilkins in a crowded Player of the Year conversation.

Nobody could have foreseen this type of season coming from Wilkins, who had not even won a regional title until last fall. Well, nobody except Wilkins.

Jason Sterner

Four years ago, Sterner came as close as one can get to winning a major championship without winning. 

Sterner had the lead over Prather entering the final frame of the 2022 World Championship title match, a frame and subsequent roll-off that has almost certainly given Sterner a nightmare or two (thousand) over the years.

Earning his redemption would require climbing to consecutive stepladders. Much like Tom Daugherty’s 2021 World Championship win, this would represent a career-redefining first major title for the 42-year-old Sterner.

Darren Tang

Osku Palermaa became the first two-handed player to win a major in the third WSOB, and Belmonte accelerated the two-handed uprising with three World Championship victories among nine WSOB titles.

If Tang were to win the World Championship 16 months after converting to two hands, the chronology of the two-handed revolution would have reached its inevitable conclusion.

Tang’s success thus far has reportedly already inspired fringe-tour players to attempt the switch. Parlaying three finals appearances into two titles would have to compel many more to switch to two hands.