Atlanta Blazers select Quadri Aruna first overall in Season 4 MLTT Draft

The Atlanta Blazers selected Nigeria’s Quadri Aruna with the first overall pick in the Season 4 Major League Table Tennis (MLTT) Draft.

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Aruna becomes the fourth No. 1 pick in MLTT Draft history, joining a club that includes Enzo Angles (SPINDEX: 2766), Liam Pitchford (2897) and new teammate Yuya Oshima (2779). The Blazers selected Aruna with the mutual expectation that he will compete in all 18 of his team’s Season 4 matches, which was a key reason why Blazers head coach Koji Itagaki selected him first overall.

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“I talked with him; we really know each other, and he said he’d play all the matches,” Itagaki said after the draft. “If he comes and plays all the matches, we are very strong.”

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Aruna is a three-time Olympian, five-time African Cup winner and seven-time African Champion. He became the first African to ever crack the Top 10 of ITTF’s Men’s Singles rankings in May 2022.

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The Texas Smash selected Takuya Jin (Japan), a longtime table tennis veteran who earned titles in the T. League, Polish Superliga and Champions League, with the second overall pick. The Florida Crocs, who finished Season 3 with the league’s lowest winning percentage, selected four-time Olympian Omar Assar (Egypt) third overall.

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The Bay Area Blasters chose Antoine Hachard (France), a two-time silver medalist at the French Table Tennis Championships, with the fourth pick. The Los Angeles Spinners then selected current World No. 22 An Jaehyun (South Korea) with the fifth pick.

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Li He (China) became the first woman off the board after the New York Slice selected her with the sixth overall pick. One pick later, the Princeton Revolution made Week 3 Player of the Week Kang Dong-Soo (South Korea) the first player with MLTT experience to be selected.

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The Chicago Wind took Cao Yantao (China) eighth overall before the Carolina Gold Rush drafted Park Chan-Hyeok (South Korea) with the ninth pick. The Portland Paddlers closed out the first round by adding 2025 U.S. Open champion Minseo Oh (South Korea) to their MLTT Cup-winning roster.

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Twenty-four players were selected within the five rounds of this year’s draft. The full order of the Season 4 MLTT Draft can be found here.

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MLTT’s fourth season will stream exclusively on Table Tennis TV, which can be found on TableTennis.TV, iOS, Android, Apple TV, Roku and Amazon Fire TV.

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