Nick Kyrgios does not believe he will need to \u201ctry 100 per cent\u201d to beat world No.1 Aryna Sabalenka in a new \u201cbattle of the sexes\u201d match to be played in Hong Kong in the lead-up to the Australian Open.<\/p>\n
Kyrgios, who has not played any tennis since the Miami Open in March this year, has reportedly arranged a match against Sabalenka that will see the two go head-to-head in a showdown reminiscent of the famous contest between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in 1973.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old Australian revealed the plans in a YouTube interview with fellow ATP Tour player Alexander Bublik, where he declared Sabalenka, a three-time grand slam singles champion was \u201cnot going to beat me\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, we\u2019re the same agency me and Sabalenka. She\u2019s awesome, by the way. Getting to know her, she\u2019s definitely a character, but I\u2019m super excited for that,\u201d Kyrgios said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s the type of player that she genuinely thinks she\u2019s going to win… She\u2019s not going to beat me.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Bublik suggested the match could be more of an exhibition, where neither player tries too hard, Kyrgios replied: \u201cDo you really think I have to try 100 per cent? [I will] definitely [try] because I\u2019m representing I guess you, the men\u2019s side. I would say, like, 6-2.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Kyrgios was pressed on why he was so confident he would win, and where he felt his strengths would lie against Sabalenka, he said it was \u201cOur serves\u2026 women can\u2019t return, and then we can just chip and drop shot.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a more assured response from Kyrgios than when he had previously discussed the proposed match against Sabalenka on talkSport in July, when he admitted to being \u201cnervous\u201d because his opponent is \u201cin her absolute prime\u201d. Even on that occasion, though, he backed himself to win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Kyrgios does not believe he will need to \u201ctry 100 per cent\u201d to beat world No.1 Aryna…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-114980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}