The new "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match between Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios is getting closer and the debate is getting louder about whether this friendly match (December 28 in Dubai) will be harmless entertainment or it will end up damaging women's tennis, specially if Sabalenka, World No. 1 in WTA, loses to Kyrgios, currently World No. 672 after a series od injuries kept him away from most of the season.
Billie Jean King, 82 years old, founder of the Women's Tennis Association back in 1973, the same year she took part in the second "Battle of the Sexes", beating 55-year-old Bobby Riggs (who months earlier had beaten Margaret Court), is critical of the new tennis match between Sabalenka and Kyrgios: "The only similarity is that one is a boy and one is a girl. That's it. Everything else, no."
"Ours was about social change; culturally, where we were in 1973. This one is not", King claimed in an interview with BBC Sport. "I hope it's a great match. I want Sabalenka, obviously, to win, but it's just not the same. Mine was really political. It was rough, culturally, what was coming in with it", King said.
She also commented the fact that Sabalenka will play the match (a best of three sets with a 10-point tie-break) in a side that will be 9% smaller (because tournament organisers Evolve found that female players move about 9% slower on average): "I played Bobby three out of five sets, I played on a court and didn't change anything. I said, 'look, I play straight up or else I'm not going to play'. And Bobby loved it."
The controversies surrounding the "Battle of the Sexes" between Sabalenka and Kyrgios
The match between Sabalenka and Kyrgios is also being controversial because Kyrgios admitted that she assaulted an ex-girlfriend in 2021 and once shared a post from Andrew Tate, although he later distanced from the self-proclaimed misogynist influencer. Sabalenka has also been criticised after saying that trans women should not participate in women's sports.