Battle of the Sexes: Billie Jean King vs Bobby Riggs Showdown

On September twentieth, nineteen seventy three, at the Houston Atrodome, one of the biggest exposition tennis matches took place where Bobby Riggs, former Wimbledon champion, challenge Billy Jean King, one of the top female tennis players of all time. That was known as the Battle of the Sexist to see who was better on the tennis court. Will dive into how it all happened today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reeze, your guide to help you daily learn more about sports history as you become a sports historian. Now, tennis is a unique sport as men and women can play together relatively well as there's not a lot of contact like in football. In your height and weight doesn't matter like in basketball. Tennis you have your side and your opponent has their side and who has the best skill. Now, men usually have a faster serve and more power, but power does not necessarily mean wins now. Bobby Riggs was one of the best tennis players through the nineteen forties. He was ranked number one in the worlds three times and won six major titles throughout his career, including three Wimbledon titles and will retire in nineteen fifty one, but was always in the tennis world. In nineteen seventy three, he actually stated that the female game was inferior to the men and that at age fifty five, he could still be the top female tennis player, who at the time was Billy Jean King, who was known as one of the greatest women's tennis players of all time. She won thirty nine Grand Slams throughout her career, winning over seven hundred matches, so Riggs obviously challenged her at the time, and she declined, and Margaret Court actually stepped in and accepted a twenty thousand dollars guarantee for the match, more than she earned for winning the French and Australian Opens that year. And Margaret had won over twenty four Grand Slams throughout her career and at the time she was thirty years old and had just come back from having her first child. And the match actually happened on Mother's Day in California and was televised by CBS Sports, and the match that became known as the Mother's Day Massacre, as Riggs dominated from the jump, winning six to two in the first set and six to one in the second set, where Court really didn't have much of a chance. Because of this, it made it even more popular, as Riggs said, look, I beat the best there was, so the women's game is inferior. And because he kept saying this, Billy Jing King accepted a lucrative offer with the match a winner take all of one hundred thousand dollars in a primetime event on ABC, as she wanted to take him down because she knew the women could beat men, especially out of prime men. Now, Gene was twenty nine before this all happened and was ranked number one in the world. And though this was the second matchup, this is the one everyone remembers as it was more advertised, more televised, and Billy Jing King was more notoriety as Court had missed the final the previous season due to giving birth to a child, and there was a great flare for this event. Billy Jean entered in a klea Patris style feather adorned leader, which is one of those things you see kings and queens in the olden days have where people are carrying them and they sit at top of it, and Riggs entered on a rickshaw and presented King with a giant lollipop, and she gave him a squealing pig. Now, Billy Jean was given fifty thousand dollars to wear a Sugar Daddy jacket. Now, Sugar Daddy's is it what you think of today? This was manufactured by the Tucci Roll Company. It was mainly just a brick of a caramel tasting flavor on a stick, kind of like a lollipop, but with caramel, and that was very popular at the time. Now. The event happened on September twentieth, nineteen seventy three, at the Houston Astrodome. The first set started and Riggs actually began with a lot of confidence came out with the lead. But King actually came back and used her strategy as Riggs wasn't in peak condition and made him run around the entire court, having long rallies and tiring him out and would win six to four. And she took this momentum after winning the first one, and in the second set, Riggs showed his fatigue. He was trying trick shots and going for smashes and trying everything he could to use his power over the volleys, but Billy Jean continued her strategy of running him around and attacking his weak serves with powerful returns. In one the second set six to three. Now, unlike in the previous Battle of the Sexist where they played by the women's rules where you played best of three, in this one, Billy Gean agreed to play by the men's rule best five, so they would play a third set. So, despite winning two rounds, normally she would have won the match on the women's circuit, she had to play at least one more, and by the start of this one Riggs was completely tired and King kept running him around back and forth, back and forth, doing long rallies as much as she could, and Riggs was no match. She won the third set six to three. In the match was a major success for the tennis community, and this was a great moment for women's tennis in general. At the time, women were not getting paid as much as the men. Currently, women and men get the same prize money for winning a Grand Slam, and they are the closest between any sport between men and women in their payout discrepancy. Although men are paid a little bit more, overall, it is much less than any other sport in the world. And this was a huge moment as an estimated ninety million people worldwide watched this event and over thirty thousand attendance, which was the largest audience event for a US tennis match in the United States. But this was a great moment for tennis in general, and it went on to create some documentaries and a movie starring Emma Stone and Steve Carell in twenty seventeen. But this wasn't the last Battle of the Sexes, as September twenty fifth, nineteen ninety two, Martina Navratilova and Jimmy Connors actually faced off as well in the quote third Battle of the Sexes. Now, this was more of an evenly matched play as Jimmy was only forty years old and Martina Novitulova was thirty five, and they made this a pay per view event and each player was played six hundred and fifty thousand dollars guaranteed with half a million going to the winner, and Jimmy Connor's actually won in straight sets, And this is something that has done every now and then. There have been many exhibitions that have done. More recently, Lee Ni of China actually beat Novak Djokovic in a single set match in Beijing in thirteen. But now they're normally just smaller events done for charity as we haven't had a real battle of the sexist in a while. But it just goes to show you that men and women can play on the same court and shows the uniqueness of tennis to allow this as a possibility. And if you want to learn more about tennis, I want to tell you all about the podcast Tennis Culture, where are Nelson and Reza to Australians with great accents, use their experience in tennis knowledge to go over all that's happening in tennis. It's a great way if you love to know what's going on in tennis now as they do it in a fun and unique way. And if you like to hear Australians talk, there's no better place to listen than to the Tennis Culture podcast. And we'll have a link below if you want to check them out. And if you liked this episode, please let us know by leaving us from a review, and if you want to, you can tell us a topic you want us to cover in that review. Leave us your name in the topic and we will get that done just for you more Daily sports history and come back Monday for more daily sports history