DUBAI, Dec 29 (Reuters) \u2013 Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios defended their controversial \u201cBattle of the Sexes\u201d match and said they failed to understand why an exhibition aimed at showcasing tennis drew so much negativity from the tennis community.<\/p>\n
Former Wimbledon finalist Kyrgios \u200ddefeated world number one Sabalenka 6-3 6-3 at a packed Coca-Cola Arena on Sunday despite several rule tweaks implemented by the organisers to level the playing field.<\/p>\n
Critics had warned that the match, a nod to the 1973 original \u201cBattle of the Sexes\u201d in which women\u2019s trailblazer Billie Jean King beat then 55-year-old former Grand Slam winner Bobby Riggs, risked trivialising the women\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
King said Sunday\u2019s encounter lacked the \u200cstakes of her match while others, including former doubles world number \u200cone Rennae Stubbs, said the event was a publicity stunt and money grab.<\/p>\n
\u201cI honestly don\u2019t understand how people were able to find something negative in this event,\u201d Sabalenka told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think for the WTA, I just showed that I was playing great tennis; it was an entertaining match \u2026 it \u200bwasn\u2019t like 6-0 6-0. It was a great fight, it was interesting to watch and it brought more eyes on tennis.<\/p>\n
\u201cLegends were watching; pretty big people were messaging me, wishing \u200dme all the best and telling me that they\u2019re \u200bgoing to be watching from all different areas of life.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea \u200bbehind it is to help our sport grow and show tennis from a different side, that \u200dtennis events can be fun and we can make it almost as big as Grand Slam matches.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyrgios, who was once ranked 13th in the world but had tumbled to number 671 after injuries hampered his career over the last few years, pointed to how competitive Sabalenka was against him.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me just remind you that I\u2019m one of 16 people that \u200dhave ever beaten the \u2018Big Four\u2019 \u2013 Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, and Rafa Nadal have all lost to me,\u201d Kyrgios said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe just proved she can go out there and compete against someone \u200dthat\u2019s beaten the greatest of \u200dall time. There\u2019s nothing but positive that can be taken away \u200bfrom this.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone that was negative watched. That\u2019s the funny thing about \u200bit as \u2060well, like this has been the most talked about event probably \u200cin sport in the last six months if we look at how many interactions we had on social media, in the news.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure the next time we do it, if I\u2019m a part of it and if she\u2019s a part of it, it\u2019ll be a cultural movement that will happen more often, and I think it\u2019s a step in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Bengaluru; \u2060Editing by Peter Rutherford)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI, Dec 29 (Reuters) \u2013 Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios defended their controversial \u201cBattle of the Sexes\u201d match…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-374694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374694","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=374694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}