There aren't many days in the history of women's sports more significant than Sept. 20, 1973.
Despite the garish spectacle of Billie Jean King being carried into the Astrodome on a chariot by barely-dressed men, then presenting Bobby Riggs with a baby pig to symbolize his chauvinism, tennis' iconic Battle of the Sexes is remembered — and rightly so — as a serious turning point in the fight to legitimize female athletes in the eyes of a male-dominated culture.
Set against the backdrop of Title IX's passage the year before and the establishment of the WTA Tour months earlier, 90 million people worldwide watched King's victory on television. It turned her into a global superstar. It validated women's tennis as a commercial enterprise, opening the door for other women's sports to do the same. In many ways, it turbocharged the women's liberation movement into households and workplaces across the country.
"(It) was really political," King told BBC Sport in a recent interview. "It was rough, culturally, what was coming with it. I knew I had to beat him for societal change. I had a lot of reasons to win."
For comparison's sake, the next Battle of the Sexes on Dec. 28, 2025 is, uh, not going to be that.
If anything, the match between world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and tennis bad boy Nick Kyrgios — in Dubai, of all places — is a nakedly cynical, agency-arranged cash grab representing little more than the cultural rot of social media and the same addiction to meaningless theatrics that gives our overstimulated brains the dopamine hit we now wake up craving.
"Hollow and unserious and feckless while still being nugatory and pointless," longtime commentator and soon-to-be International Tennis Hall of Fame inductee Mary Carillo wrote in an e-mail to Yahoo Sports. "But in the larger sense it's a useless, invalidating, inane piece of flapdoodle."
It might be unserious, but it comes with a serious question: Given that women's tennis is well past the point of needing gimmicks to gin up attention, would it potentially be damaging if the No. 1 player in the world and a 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 agency that represents both players and set up the event, is billing the match as an homage to the legacy of what happened 1973.
But not only is that ridiculous on its face, it's completely unnecessary.
For one thing, this isn't even going to be a real tennis match. Whereas King and Riggs played a standard best-of-five set format — a huge part of what made King's 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 victory so meaningful — the dimensions of the court for this one have been modified so Sabalenka has about 9-percent less real estate to defend on her side of the net. Also, both players will only get one serve, which probably plays to her advantage since Kyrgios — one of the biggest servers in tennis history — will be forced to play a bit safer.
So even if Sabalenka wins, the modified rules ensure an automatic asterisk.
"It's more of a show — it has nothing to do with the Battle of the Sexes, with what Billie Jean King versus Bobby Riggs meant," former No. 1 Garbiñe Muguruza said recently on the Spanish COPE podcast.
Let's face it, there's also the misogyny of it all, starting with where the match is going to be held.
While the United Arab Emirates constitution guarantees equal rights in areas like education, employment and property, human rights groups have identified several areas of concern, especially regarding domestic violence and family laws that do not protect women equally and do not align with Western values.
There's also the Kyrgios issue.
In 1973, Riggs was a 55-year old has-been and country club hustler whose garden-variety, Archie Bunker-style chauvinism was both cartoonish and reflective of a society in transition.
Kyrgios reflects modern society's thirst for a circus from his on-court meltdowns, to his prodigious but largely wasted talent, to a guilty plea in Australia for pushing his ex-girlfriend onto the pavement during an argument in 2021 (the magistrate in the case did not record a criminal conviction) to an episode in 2024 where he had to disavow self-described misogynist and controversial influencer Andrew Tate over social media activity that became the source of complaints during Wimbledon when he was working as a broadcaster for the BBC.
At this point, with Kyrgios' tennis career hanging by a thread, it's hard to escape the feeling this is one last shot at a giant payday, using a vapid instrument that will accomplish nothing except once again validating his ability to generate attention.
"In whatever we do in today's day and age there's always going to be negative noise, there's always people trying to tear us down," he said in an interview with UK-based Talk Sport. "I have ultimate respect for Aryna. We have a good friendship. It's done in a good way. We're going out there to compete and we're entertainers, going to have some fun, but we want to play a hard match. That's it. She's the No. 1 player in the world, she's very capable. There's going to be millions of people watching this. If I don't get a good start it'll feel like the world's on my shoulders.
"Think about all the good that's going to come from this."
Good for his bank account, maybe. But for tennis? For the popularity of women's sports? For the advancement of women's rights in the Middle East?
"It's quite funny to see how some people say that," Sabalenka said on Piers Morgan Uncensored. "We're just bringing our sport to the next level and bringing the show and the visibility this event got in the last couple months is incredible and we're going to compete and fight and it's going to explode our sport a bit more."
Sure, if you believe all attention is good attention.
But the beauty of being a top-ranked women's tennis player in 2025 is that you don't need to do stuff like this. Largely thanks to the foundation King laid for the WTA Tour and pushing for equal prize money at the Grand Slams, Sabalenka has made $15 million this year alone in on-court earnings. Women's tennis can stand alone as a premiere sport in practically any country in the world.
In fact, the whole point of what King accomplished that day in 1973 was building a sustainable sport so that women didn't have to do anything like that again to get respect as athletes.
To reduce that legacy to crass commercialism and social media views is disappointing, but fitting.
"The only similarity is one's a boy, one's a girl," King said. "That's it. I hope it's a great match. I want Sabalenka to obviously win. It's just not the same.
