{"id":374645,"date":"2025-12-27T16:00:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T16:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/374645\/"},"modified":"2025-12-27T16:00:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T16:00:16","slug":"aryna-sabalenka-vows-to-beat-nick-kyrgios-in-battle-of-the-sexes-match","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/374645\/","title":{"rendered":"Aryna Sabalenka vows to beat Nick Kyrgios in Battle of the Sexes match"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> is backing herself to come out on top in her ‘Battle of the Sexes’ exhibition match against Nick Kyrgios<\/a> by embracing the unknown in Dubai.<\/p>\n

The women’s World No. 1 meets Australian maverick Kyrgios on Sunday, emulating one of the most famous tennis matches in history when Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs at the Houston Astrodome in 1973.<\/p>\n

The three-set match will use modified rules that see each player restricted to one serve only, Sabalenka’s side of the court being reduced in size by nine per cent and a 10-point deciding tie-break if needed.<\/p>\n

The Coca-Cola Arena rivals are to put their off-court friendship on pause for the day with Sabalenka confident of her chances while acknowledging she is entering unfamiliar territory.<\/p>\n

Aryna Sabalenka will face Nick Kyrgios on Sunday.\u00a0Photo by Christopher Pike\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

When asked who is going to win, the 27-year-old four-time Grand Slam winner immediately replied: “Me.<\/p>\n

“This event is really unpredictable. I don’t know what to expect and that’s what I love because this is the feeling that you chase when you play sport.<\/p>\n

“I love to challenge myself and this is a huge challenge, especially playing against Nick, a guy who is unpredictable and crazy.<\/p>\n

“It’s great training for me and a great message to the girls out there — I hope they will see how strong and tough I am by playing against a guy.”<\/p>\n

Kyrgios has been limited to just five singles matches this year because of injuries, the most recent of which was in March, and the 30-year-old is currently ranked 673 in the world.<\/p>\n

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“I’ve seen some pretty scary opponents on my time. I’m well equipped and I know that Aryna has got some serious weapons at her disposal,” Kyrgios said.<\/p>\n

“But I have come here prepared and ready. If you know me, you know how unpredictable I am, but I’m as well prepared as I possibly could be. I feel like I’m going to win.<\/p>\n

“I haven’t won a Grand Slam but I’ve walked out in a Grand Slam final. This is something completely different, I don’t know how my body or my mind will react.<\/p>\n

“It’s a completely different energy. I’m going to bring something different, for sure. My strength has always been my unpredictability, even on the men’s tour.<\/p>\n

“Guys like Novak Djokovic<\/a>, Roger Federer<\/a> and Rafael Nadal<\/a> have struggled with not understanding how to play me at certain times because even I don’t know what I’m going to do at certain times.<\/p>\n

“I’m going to bring something she hasn’t seen before. I’ll play the style of tennis that I know is effective.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aryna Sabalenka is backing herself to come out on top in her ‘Battle of the Sexes’ exhibition match…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-374645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374645","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=374645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}