{"id":371565,"date":"2025-12-27T06:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T06:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/371565\/"},"modified":"2025-12-27T06:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T06:49:10","slug":"battle-of-the-sexes-tennis-match-between-aryna-sabalenka-nick-kyrgios-dividing-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/371565\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Battle of the Sexes\u2019 tennis match between Aryna Sabalenka, Nick Kyrgios dividing opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios will meet in the \u201cBattle of the Sexes\u201d on Sunday, but the only similarity between the Dubai exhibition and the historic 1973 match is the name, Billie Jean King has said.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Women\u2019s world No 1 Sabalenka, a four-time grand slam champion, takes on injury-prone Australian Kyrgios in a highly publicised showdown that has divided tennis fans.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The title \u201cBattle of the Sexes\u201d harked back to the meeting between King and Bobby Riggs in September 1973, in what was a game-changing moment for the sport.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Back then, there was far more at stake with the nascent women\u2019s professional tour, set up by King, fighting for its legitimacy, and prize money for female players still far lower than for the men.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Beyond the tennis court, women struggled for equal rights in almost every aspect of life.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Billie Jean King (centre) has reservations about the match, but still hopes Aryna Sabalenka wins. Photo: Getty Images\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/6d1abae3-6ef8-4037-9009-adfd34c68111_e46a4f15.jpg\" title=\"Billie Jean King (centre) has reservations about the match, but still hopes Aryna Sabalenka wins. Photo: Getty Images\"\/>Billie Jean King (centre) has reservations about the match, but still hopes Aryna Sabalenka wins. Photo: Getty Images<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cIt\u2019s not the same thing,\u201d King, now 82, said. \u201cOurs was about social change \u2026 this one is not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios will meet in the \u201cBattle of the Sexes\u201d on Sunday, but the only&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[6005,22932,158878,121068,27611,49,48,158879,150380,1443,10460,36756,4557,82,593,614,14180,20436],"class_list":["post-371565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-aryna-sabalenka","tag-atp-tour","tag-australian-kyrgios","tag-battle-of-the-sexes","tag-billie-jean-king","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dubai-exhibition","tag-garbine-muguruza","tag-houston","tag-nick-kyrgios","tag-rennae-stubbs","tag-september","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-wimbledon","tag-womens-tennis","tag-wta-tour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}