Nick Kyrgios believes few male players would accept the chance \u200dto face a top woman as the maverick Australian prepares to take on women’s world number one Aryna \u200bSabalenka in a “Battle of the Sexes” exhibition later this month.<\/p>\n
While many consider the December 28th meeting<\/a> between Kyrgios<\/a> and four-time Grand \u200cSlam champion Sabalenka<\/a> in Dubai as nothing more than entertainment, critics \u200cbelieve it risks undermining the reputation of women’s tennis.<\/p>\n Women’s trailblazer Billie Jean King famously defeated the 55-year-old former Grand Slam champion Bobby Riggs in a similar showdown, and Kyrgios conceded he \u2060was a bit nervous.<\/p>\n “I think my chances are really high. I’m very \u200cconfident in my ability,” Kyrgios said with a smile during the \u200bWorld Tennis League exhibition tournament in the south Indian city of Bengaluru on Wednesday.<\/p>\n “It’s going to be \u200dfun, but also I’m a bit nervous. I like doing things that are outside the box. Honestly, not many \u200dmales in my position \u200cwould have done that and taken the opportunity.”<\/p>\n Unlike Riggs, Kyrgios is still an active player on the men’s circuit even though he has played only five professional matches in 2025 \u2060because of injuries that have dogged his career.<\/p>\n The former world number 13 had said in September that women cannot return men’s serves and he would defeat Sabalenka without having to try 100% but added the match would increase respect between the men’s and women’s tours.<\/p>\n Sabalenka said this month men were “biologically stronger” than women, but her clash with the former Wimbledon finalist was not about that, and the event would only help bring women’s tennis to a higher level<\/p>\n Kyrgios, \u2060a major draw on and off the court with \u200chis natural talent and unapologetic personality, said he was unsure how the Dubai event would unfold.<\/p>\n “I don’t know what’s going to happen, we’ll see,” he added.<\/p>\n “I’ve been in a lot of controversies in my whole career and \u2060this is another thing I get to experience.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Kyrgios believes few male players would accept the chance \u200dto face a top woman as the maverick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-321790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}