Bad Boy Fabio Fognini Flashes The Middle Finger To Fans In Shanghai And Other Italian Meltdowns [VIDEOS]

Chalk this one up for another sore loser in the world of sports. Italian tennis player Fabio Fognini flashed his middle finger to fans watching the 2014 Shanghai Open in last Tuesday. The hot-headed and controversial Italian player lost to Chinese Chuhan Wang in straight sets, 7-6 (5), 6-4 in the opening round of the tournament in Shanghai, China.

A frustrated Fognini is not new in the tennis world with lots of “meltdowns” in the past with multiple evidences in video-sharing site, YouTube, as seen below. In the most recent meltdown in Shanghai, Fognini’s frustration rooted from the fact the 22-year-old Chinese entered the match ranked 553rd in the world and was making his debut in a ATP World Tour tournament.

Here’s the quick rundown of Fabio’s frustrations on the court in recent years:

Fognini sarcastic celebration and argument with umpire at the 2013 Wimbledon Championships:

(YouTube/Victor Magon)

The 30th seed in that Grand Slam tournament, Fognini went on to lose that match, 7-6(5), 5-7, 3-6, 2-6 to Jurgen Melzer of Austria for the opening round upset.

Here’s Fognini against an umpire at Indian Wells 2014— to be fair with the Italian, the umpire made a bad call in this one but the Italian fired a tirade of the F-words during the argument:

(YouTube/Alexandre Cossenza)

And here’s Fognini throwing away a match vs. Radek Stepanek at the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 Cincinnati:

(YouTube/soustek22)

And finally, here’s Fognini flipping the bird in Shanghai:

(YouTube/interesting.ThingS)

Owing to great 2013 and 2014 seasons, Fognini has climbed to a career-high 13th place in the ATP rankings in April 2014 and has since retained his spot inside the top 20. However, the Italian is still inconsistent in some matches that he ha failed to crack the top 10 or the elite group in men’s tennis. A meltdown in some other matches doesn’t help as well— not only his world ranking but also his reputation as one of the bad guys in tennis.