{"id":134349,"date":"2025-09-05T09:16:23","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T09:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/134349\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T09:16:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T09:16:23","slug":"aryna-sabalenka-keen-to-play-nick-kyrgios-in-battle-of-the-sexes-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/134349\/","title":{"rendered":"Aryna Sabalenka keen to play Nick Kyrgios in &#8216;Battle of the Sexes&#8217; event"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Defending US Open champion Sabalenka will bid for the fourth Grand Slam singles title of her career on Saturday, having also won the Australian Open in 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kyrgios, who reached a career high 13th in 2016, has only played five matches this year since returning from a serious wrist injury <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/tennis\/articles\/cx2knypyy0lo\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">that kept him out for 18 months<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He has not played on the ATP Tour since losing in the Miami Open second round in March.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s going to be a good thing if I&#8217;m able to [beat] him, but we are not sure about the place,&#8221; Sabalenka added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;If we&#8217;re going to bring it, we&#8217;re going to bring it to somewhere where it&#8217;s going to be a lot of people watching and we&#8217;re gonna put a lot of pressure on Nick.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Three official matches labelled as the &#8216;Battle of the Sexes&#8217; have taken place &#8211; most famously between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in 1973.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">American veteran Riggs beat Australia&#8217;s Margaret Court before King exacted revenge four months later. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In 1992, 40-year-old Jimmy Connors beat fellow Grand Slam champion Martina Navratilova, 35, under hybrid rules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defending US Open champion Sabalenka will bid for the fourth Grand Slam singles title of her career on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-134349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}