Tennis season may be over, but silly season is in full swing, and the last match of 2025 will probably be the worst. Sunday will feature the ‘Battle of the sexes», an exhibition – in every sense of the word – between the feminine world n°1 Aryna Sabalenka and part-time tennis player, full-time attention seeker Nick Kyrgios.
In case you have been living under a rock – in which case I envy you – here’s how it works. The two men will play a three-set match, with a deciding 10-point tie-break if necessary, and a single serve per point, in Dubai (Yes, the irony of holding this event, a giant step backwards for women, in the repressive state that is the United Arab Emirates, is overwhelming).
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It’s reminiscent of the original, now-iconic 1973 Battle of the Sexes, when the world’s best female player, Billie Jean Kingdefeated 55-year-old retiree Bobby Riggs in straight sets. But the basic format – brilliant woman versus mediocre man – is about just about everything the two have in common.
Let’s start with the obvious. The original Battle of the Sexes had something to prove. It pitted perhaps the greatest pioneer of women’s sport against an outspoken misogynist, a man who identified as a “macho pig” and extolled the “inferior” nature of women’s football.
It was about finally women’s tennis being taken seriously, and it happened the same year that King and the Original Nine founded the WTA. The battle for fair wages and treatment went hand in hand with the women’s rights movement.
King later said: “I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn’t win this match. It would ruin the women’s tour and affect the self-esteem of all women.” She said THE BBC this month, she played Riggs in an attempt at “societal change.”
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Perhaps it is only fitting that we find ourselves with a twisted version of this situation in 2025, the era of the Trump administration, the “tradwife,” reactionary forces that take us back to the last century.
This week’s match doesn’t have the same gravity. It does not aim to achieve anything. It’s not even billed as a celebration of tennis. It claims no higher purpose beyond simply seeking profits, a lucrative move for a player who really should know better and one who relies on being in the spotlight for his self-esteem. This is the sequel that no one wanted.
Sabalenka’s side of the court will be nine percent smaller than Kyrgios’, as experts at Evolve – the agency hosting both players and organizing the match – say women move on average nine percent slower than men. Does this serve any purpose other than to further gamify what is already a total gimmick and provide Kyrgios with a quick excuse if he lost? Of course not.
Sabalenka is a four-time Grand Slam champion and WTA number 1 (Getty Images)
The sad truth is that whatever the outcome, Kyrgios and others of his ilk will present it as a success. A victory on the court would inflate her already considerable ego and provide further ammunition for trolls, misogynists and incels to argue that women’s tennis is inferior and that women’s worth comes from how they measure up to men.
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A loss would undoubtedly be shrugged off as an incident, while keeping his name in the headlines, where he likes to be (King hit winners on 68 percent of his shots against Riggs, and still had to endure suggestions that he deliberately threw the match away. A headline from the era read, “Women Ecstatic, Men Make Excuses.” Will History Repeat Itself?).
Surely there is a way to implement this concept well, perhaps as a tribute to King and his accomplishments. This would require different actors. Sabalenka is a popular and entertaining personality, but calling her an ambassador of women’s football would be a huge task; she was forced to walk back comments claiming that men’s tennis was “more interesting” and that she preferred not to watch the women’s match.
As for his opponent, Kyrgios has not played a competitive match since March and has slipped to 673rd in the world, with his appearance in the 2022 Wimbledon final a distant memory. He is known more for his bad behavior than his tennis prowess; he admitted assaulting an ex-girlfriend in 2021 but avoided conviction for it, and liked a post from Andrew Tate last year before being forced to distance himself from the far-right influencer.
Billie Jean King had a seismic impact on women’s tennis and her loss to Riggs accelerated her progress (Associated Press)
He has since declared to BBC he is a “different person” now, but his protests are unlikely to stem the wave of misogynistic abuse his victory would generate online. Nor is it what one might describe as a brilliant advertisement for newcomers to the sport, the people this match hopes to attract.
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And now the BBC is broadcasting this tripe, getting involved in the cesspool that is modern day gender politics and the battle for clicks over a real sporting spectacle. This feels like another misstep that could and should have been avoided. It’s another disappointment in a story where no one is doing well.
Organizers of the event encourage viewers to “choose sides,” turning the original concept — one that anyone with a moral compass would have supported King — into a battle of explicitly gendered personalities. Poor Clare Balding and Andrew Cotter have been drafted in to try and give this a sheen of respectability, but it’s a waste of their talents.
King beat Riggs, an aging former champion desperate to stay relevant, in straight sets (Getty Images)
You could say it’s just a game, something to fill the five minutes that is the tennis offseason; even more content for an already overloaded attention economy. But it represents something much bigger and darker than just a tennis match.
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King vs. Riggs isn’t the only time this concept has been implemented. The Wimbledon men’s and women’s singles champions have faced each other on several occasions, as far back as 1888. Ilie Nastase – another famous for his behavior towards women – took on Evonne Goolagong in a dress, once again asserting that such matches are, if not explicitly designed, always misused to diminish women’s sport. Over the years, victories have been roughly evenly split between the sexes, with some matches featuring handicaps for the men.
But if the King’s Battle of the Sexes had so much force and influence on sports culture, it’s because the stakes were so high. There was a higher purpose to this. This one will fade into obscurity over time, probably almost as soon as it happens. But the damage will be done.
