In the history of women’s sports, few days are more important than September 20, 1973.
Although Billie Jean King was carted into the Astrodome by naked men and then presented a piglet to Bobby Riggs to symbolize his chauvinism, tennis’s iconic battle of the sexes is still remembered – and rightly so – as a serious turning point in the fight to legitimize female athletes in the eyes of a male-dominated culture.
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King’s victory was watched by 90 million people around the world on television against the backdrop of the passage of Title IX the previous year and the establishment of the WTA Tour a few months earlier. This made her a global superstar. It validated women’s tennis as a business and opened the door for other women’s sports to do the same. In many ways, it propelled the women’s liberation movement into homes and workplaces across the country.
“(It’s) really political,” King told BBC Sport in a recent interview. “Culturally, what comes with that is tough. I know I have to beat him to achieve social change. I have a lot of reasons to win.”
For comparison’s sake, the next Battle of the Sexes on December 28, 2025 won’t be like this.
If anything, the match between world number one Aryna Sabalenka and tennis bad boy Nick Kyrgios – in Dubai, of all places – was a nakedly cynical, institutionally arranged cash grab that represented nothing more than the cultural rot of social media and an addiction to meaningless drama that gives our overstimulated brains the dopamine we now crave when we wake up.
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“Empty, unserious and irresponsible while still being useless and pointless,” longtime commentator and incoming International Tennis Hall of Fame inductee Marie Carrillo wrote in an email to Yahoo Sports. “But in a broader sense it is useless, ineffective, empty drivel.”
That may be a bit unserious, but it also raises a serious question: Given that women’s tennis no longer needs to rely on gimmicks to attract attention, could there be potential damage done if the world No. 1 and four-time Grand Slam champion loses to a tennis carnival barker who has played six official matches since the start of 2023?
Evolve, the sports body that represents players from both sides and organizes the event, promoted the match as a tribute to the events of 1973.
But not only is it superficially ridiculous, it’s completely unnecessary.
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For one thing, it’s not even a real tennis match. Although King and Riggs played in a standard best-of-five-set format – one of the big reasons why King won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 – the court size for this match had been modified so that Sabalenka’s defensive area on the side of the net was reduced by about 9 percent. Additionally, both players will only receive one serve, which may work in her favor as Kyrgios – one of the biggest serve players in tennis history – will be forced to play a little safer.
So even if Sabalenka wins, the revised rules will ensure an automatic asterisk.
“It’s more of a show – it has nothing to do with the battle of the sexes or what Billie Jean King meant to Bobby Riggs,” former world No. 1 Garbiñe Muguruza recently said on the Spanish COPE podcast.
Billie Jean King is carried onto the court by four men to play a men’s and women’s tennis match with Bobby Riggs. (Getty Images)
(Bateman via Getty Images)
Let’s face it, there’s misogyny in it all, starting from where the game is taking place.
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While the United Arab Emirates constitution guarantees equal rights in areas such as education, employment and property, human rights groups have identified several areas of concern, particularly with regard to domestic violence and family law, which do not protect women equally and are inconsistent with Western values.
There’s also the Kyrgios problem.
In 1973, Riggs, 55, was a washed-up country club hustler whose Archie Bunker-esque jingoism was both cartoonish and reflective of a society in transition.
Kyrgios reflects modern society’s thirst for circus, from his on-court meltdowns, to his prodigious but largely wasted talent, to his 2021 guilty plea in Australia for pushing his ex-girlfriend to the pavement during an argument (magistrates in that case recorded no criminal conviction) to a 2024 incident in which he had to disavow self-professed misogynist and controversial influencer Andrew Tate’s social media activity as part of his social media campaign. The source of complaints during Wimbledon when he was working as a broadcaster for the BBC.
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At this point, with Kyrgios’ tennis career hanging in the balance, it’s hard not to feel like this is a last-ditch effort to reap huge rewards, using a boring tool that does nothing but reaffirm his ability to attract attention.
“In this day and age, no matter what we do, there will always be negative voices, there will always be people trying to destroy us,” he told Britain’s Talk Sport. “I have a lot of respect for Alina. We have a great friendship. It’s all going in a good way. We’re going to go out and compete, we’re entertainers and we’re going to have fun, but we want to have a tough match. That’s it. She’s the No. 1 player in the world and she’s very capable. There are going to be millions of people watching this fight. If I don’t get off to a good start, it feels like the world is on my shoulders.
“Think of all the benefits this will bring.”
Maybe good for his bank account. But what about tennis? To popularize women’s sports? To promote women’s rights in the Middle East?
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please.
“It’s really funny to see some people say that,” Sabalenka said on Piers Morgan Uncensored. “We’re just taking our sport to the next level and taking the incredible amount of visibility this event has gotten over the past few months and we’re going to compete and fight and it’s going to make our sport even more explosive.”
Of course, if you believe that all attention is good attention.
But the beauty of being a top women’s tennis player in 2025 is that you don’t have to do anything like this. Thanks in large part to the foundation King laid for the WTA Tour and her push for equal prize money at the Grand Slams, Sabalenka has earned $15 million in on-court earnings this year alone. Women’s tennis can independently become the premier sport in almost any country in the world.
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In fact, the whole point of what King accomplished that day in 1973 was to build a sustainable sport so that women no longer have to do similar things to gain respect as athletes.
It is disappointing but appropriate to chalk this legacy up to crass commercialism and social media views.
“The only similarity is that one is a boy and one is a girl,” King said. “That’s it. I hope it’s a good match. I hope Sabalenka wins clearly. It’s just different.
