Nick Kyrgios v Aryna Sabalenka: Why does this Battle of the Sexes feel like a gimmick?

In autumn, leaves fall, colours change and transformation occurs. And so it was 52 Septembers ago, when Billie Jean King, a bespectacled, bristling revolutionary, handed a male chauvinist a live pig and then chastised him on court.

The Battle of the Sexes was a 70s sensation. In one corner, King, 29, the reigning Wimbledon champion; in the other, the has-been hustler Bobby Riggs, 55, who said, “don’t get me wrong, I love women – in the bedroom and in the kitchen”.

It was 1973 and Helen Reddy won a Grammy for her feminist anthem “I am woman” and ended her speech by saying “I would like to thank God because she makes everything possible”. But it was also only two years since women won the right to vote in Switzerland.

In the Houston Astrodome 30,472 hollered, on TV 90 million watched. Artist Salvador Dali wandered in and boxer George Foreman dropped by. King could not afford to lose – “I thought it would set us back 50 years” – and she bravely didn’t.

On the morning of the match, wrote Grace Lichtenstein in her book A Long Way, Baby, an elderly woman in a supermarket told King, “I hope that you beat his pompous ass”. The day after, women came to King and told her they’d finally asked for the raise they’d wanted for 10 years. More than a match had been won.

The match was so profound that 44 years later they made a film titled Battle of the Sexes, with Oscar winner Emma Stone as King. But let’s be clear, when Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios produce an unnecessary reprise of this battle in December, Hollywood will not be calling.

That match was historic, this has the smell of a gimmick.

Sabalenka is the brilliant, accomplished, funny women’s world No. 1; Kyrgios is ranked No. 658, has won one match all year and only one title in six years. It is a contest with no evident purpose except to hand the finely gifted but extravagantly wasteful Kyrgios what he seeks.

Publicity.

Riggs, who won the singles, doubles and mixed titles at Wimbledon in 1939, made the cover of Time magazine. Kyrgios, whom some find entertaining, never will. It’s 2025, the world has changed, yet he’s famous for misogynistic remarks he’s made towards fellow players and an assault case. Even for this match he said in an interview, “Do you really think I have to try 100 per cent”.

Athletes are free to play who they want, but please don’t call this The Battle Of The Sexes. That 1973 match stood for something in a fraught time; this one, organised by the agency which represents both players, feels like tennis triviality.

King didn’t even want to play Riggs, till Margaret Court agreed and choked and lost to him, and so pride had to be reclaimed. This was never about women beating men, it was about proving that women were skilful, fun to watch and tough in their own right.

Not everyone felt that way. Lichtenstein, who spent a year on the women’s tours in 1973, wrote that male spectators would “make admiring comments about a shot and then, instinctively, make a crack about their chromosomes, their hen-pecked husbands or their looks”.

Mockery was mainstream. A male player told King that “no one wants to watch you birds play” but she, and thousands of women athletes, have proved that we do. The recent women’s World Cup cricket final was streamed to 185 million viewers in India – equalling the viewership of the men’s 2024 T20 World Cup final – and the women’s Euro football final in 2025 had a 53 per cent higher viewership than the 2022 final.

Now equal prize money has arrived at every Grand Slam and inclusion feels substantial. Of course, multiple battles remain to be fought in women’s sports, from media coverage to equal TV time. Even as India’s women’s team dazzled as they won cricket’s World Cup in November, their reward from their cricket board was Rs 510 million (S$7.5 million). A year ago, for winning the T20 World Cup, the men received Rs 1.25 billion.

But that particular struggle from 1973, one giant leap for equality by one determined woman, was won and done. Now what will this match – with Sabalenka’s side of the court shrunk by nine per cent because apparently women move nine per cent slower – do for women’s tennis? Or unlike King’s monumental match, is this just a hit-and-giggle exhibition?

But in a frothing social media universe, nothing escapes comment. If Sabalenka wins, cynics will say big deal, it’s an over-the-hill Kyrgios and thus it means nothing. If Kyrgios wins, trolls will gleefully say, see, Sabalenka can’t beat an over-the-hill man and use it to further deride the women’s game.

What will be won here, no one is certain, but this much seems clear. In 1973, King was out to make a profound point. In 2025, this pair might be content just to make a buck.