original ‘Battle of the Sexes’<\/a> between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in 1973 which highlighted the women’s game fighting for legitimacy and prize money.<\/p>\n“I haven’t watched [Sabalenka v Kyrgios] because I don’t watch stuff like that,” the world number two said.<\/p>\n
“I think for sure it attracted a lot of attention. It was entertainment, but I wouldn’t say that had anything to do with social change or any important topics.<\/p>\n
“I think the name was just the same as the one from the Billie Jean King match in ’73. That’s it. There were no more similarities because I feel like women’s tennis stands on its own right now.<\/p>\n
“We have so many great athletes and great stories to present, we don’t necessarily need to compare to men’s tennis.<\/p>\n
“Honestly, there doesn’t need to be any competition.”<\/p>\n
Swiatek said the mixed-team United Cup – which got under way in Australia on Friday – is a better way to celebrate men’s and women’s tennis.<\/p>\n
Ties at the United Cup comprise of one men’s and one women’s singles match and a mixed doubles.<\/p>\n
“Events like this one, United Cup, brings tennis together, and WTA fans and ATP fans can watch this event with so much excitement,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Seeing also singles players that usually don’t have space to play mixed doubles together, playing these kind of matches, I think this is actually what makes our sport much more interesting and better.”<\/p>\n
Emma Raducanu and Billy Harris are representing Great Britain at the tournament and play their first game against Japan in Perth on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wimbledon champion Iga Swiatek says tennis did not need the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ between Nick Kyrgios and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-385305","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\/385305","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=385305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}