Interview with Dennis Uspeksny: Cheating Controversy in Professional Pickleball

In this blog post, I interview Dennis Uspeksny, but you probably know him as this guy from Instagram clips. If you’ve watched my channel for more than five minutes, you know that I have a very hard stance on cheating. Dennis doesn’t claim to have misjudged these balls. He openly admits to cheating in this match, and I wanted to understand more.

The Facts

First, the viral cheating video was filmed at the Charleston PPA Challenger. It was a backdraw match between Dennis Uspensky and Noah Torres. Dennis defeated Noah 15 - 3 in this match. The next weekend, Dennis traveled to the Fort to play the APP Tour. After winning two qualifying matches, Dennis played against Armando Ferreira from Boca Raton. The APP plays rally scoring to 15, and Dennis defeats Armando 12 - 15, 16 - 14, 15 - 13.

Then, Armando posts to his social media the footage from the match between Noah and Dennis with the caption “SAME GUY WHO CHEATED AGAINST ME YESTERDAY”. As you’ll see in the interview, there are still many questions that need to be answered, and I don’t think they will be answered until the full video is made publicly available.

Dennis has been suspended by the PPA Tour for 90 days, but is currently still allowed to play at the APP Tour.

The Interview

In this interview with Dennis, I tried my best to go into it without judgment. My goal was to ask the difficult questions so that I could try to understand Dennis, and this was the result:

Admitting to Cheating

Zane: Will you admit to cheating against Noah Torres in that viral match?

Dennis: Yes, I will admit to cheating in that first-round backdraw match on a back court against Noah Torres.

Zane: Were you overruled by the referee on any of those calls?

Dennis: No. On none of the calls was I overruled. And once again, I understand the referees are forced to look at different types of positioning on the pickleball court.

Rationalization

Dennis doesn’t think he was wrong for cheating against Noah. This reminds me of the fraud triangle: incentive, opportunity, and rationalization. In the case of professional pickleball, the incentive is clear: Win matches and win money. The opportunity arises because players are still in charge of their own line calls.

Finally is rationalization, and that’s where this gets interesting. Cheaters convince themselves that they aren’t doing anything wrong. Most commonly, cheaters will claim to have been cheated first which is why they cheat in retaliation.

Dennis’ Perspective

Zane: So, Dennis, if the full video of that match came out, what would it show?

Dennis: It would show me over completely destroying Noah Torres in the match. All the words that are said by them, all of the phrases, the whole conversations between us.

Zane: I do think that's a reasonable ask for the full video of that to come out.

Suspension and Moving Forward

Zane: As a result of this, you were suspended for 90 days from the PPA tour. Do you think that that suspension is justified?

Dennis: Yes, I agree with the PPA on that suspension. I think it's fair. But this is actually a wakeup call for me. Because of this, I really want to make something of this and become the best player in the world.

Conclusion

So, if I have any takeaways from this interview, it’s that cheaters don’t see themselves as the bad guys. Dennis got suspended by the PPA, but the cheating problem is going to continue to get worse and worse until we start to implement actual deterrence policies. More on that in this video below.