{"id":373627,"date":"2025-12-28T07:20:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T07:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/373627\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T07:20:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T07:20:15","slug":"battle-of-the-sexes-when-billie-jean-king-beat-bobby-riggs-in-match-that-defined-an-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/373627\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle of the Sexes: When Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in match that defined an era"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the immediate aftermath, Riggs said he had underestimated King. “Whenever I thought I had the point won on our exchanges, she saved it,” he said.<\/p>\n

Later, there were allegations that Riggs had deliberately thrown the match, external<\/a> to pay off his gambling debts to the Mafia. <\/p>\n

Whatever the circumstances, King’s victory has stuck in the public mind. Not a day goes by when someone does not mention the Battle of the Sexes to her.<\/p>\n

“When I met President Obama in the Oval Office for the first time, he said ‘I watched that match when I was 12. I have two daughters now and it made a difference in how I raise them’,” King said.<\/p>\n

“The women who saw it, it empowered them and gave them self-confidence. <\/p>\n

“And the men come up to me and they’re the ones who are very emotional – sometimes they have tears in their eyes.”<\/p>\n

King and Riggs, who died in October 1995, stayed in touch afterwards, and he remained a sporting hero to her.<\/p>\n

“We stayed in touch and the night before he died, I had a great discussion with him,” King said.<\/p>\n

“He finally understood it was about history. I used to say to him it was about history, and he said no, it was about money.<\/p>\n

“He told me he loved me and the next day, he passed away.”<\/p>\n

King ended her career with 39 Grand Slam titles across singles, doubles and mixed doubles. <\/p>\n

But she is remembered just as much for her fight for equality in sport, and beating Riggs was a crucial part of that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the immediate aftermath, Riggs said he had underestimated King. “Whenever I thought I had the point won…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-373627","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\/373627","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=373627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}