50 Years of the Battle of the Sexes

Bobby Riggs wouldn’t take no for a solution.

The 55-year-old former Wimbledon and US Open tennis champion had been goading Billie Jean King for months again in 1973 about taking part in an exhibition match, simply so he might show “the person was supreme” however King, 29, wasn’t taking the bait.

As an alternative, Riggs turned his consideration to taking part in Australia’s Margaret Court docket, winner of 24 Grand Slam titles and the reigning world ladies’s primary. On Might 13 – Mom’s Day – 1973, Riggs trounced Court docket in straight units throughout a match in Ramona, Calif., successful 6-2, 6-1.

The “Mom’s Day Bloodbath” was the ultimate straw for King, who seen Court docket’s defeat as one more setback for girls’s tennis.

“Earlier than Margaret’s match I informed her she needed to win, however she didn’t,” the 79-year-old King recollects to The Submit. “In truth, she misplaced badly and when she misplaced I knew I needed to play him.  

“I had no selection.”

Subsequent week, on Sept. twentieth, it will likely be 50 years since Billie Jean King confronted Bobby Riggs in a contest billed as “The Battle of the Sexes.” It was a match that each made and adjusted historical past — serving to ladies’s tennis to lastly safe the identical monetary and cultural gravitas as its male counterpart.

Outspoken and provocative, Riggs, who at 55 was then the identical age as King’s father, had overtly criticized the ladies’s sport for being inferior to the boys’s and was insistent that even a retired middle-aged professional like him might nonetheless beat the very best girl gamers on the planet.

Now, after months of deliberating — and chastened by Court docket’s defeat — Billie Jean King lastly accepted the problem and agreed to take Riggs on. The timing was auspicious: Not solely had King simply gained the Wimbledon triple crown of girls’s singles, ladies’s doubles (with Rosie Casals) and blended doubles (with Owen Davidson), she was additionally in the midst of forming the Ladies’s Tennis Affiliation (WTA) and deep in negotiations with the US Garden Tennis Affiliation (USLTA) to safe equal prize cash for girls on the US Open.

With businessman and promoter Jerry Perenchio directing the pre-match build-up, Riggs threw himself right into a publicity blitz. There have been appearances on tv with Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin and press interviews galore the place, inevitably, Riggs would denigrate his opponent and girls extra typically. 

“I’ll let you know why I’ll win,” Riggs insisted in a single press convention. “She’s a lady they usually don’t have the emotional stability. She’ll choke, identical to Margaret did… the person is supreme.”

Riggs was aggressive and outlandish in his efforts to courtroom media consideration. At one observe session, Riggs invited reporters after which confirmed up carrying a T-shirt with two circles lower out to show his nipples, explaining that he thought the shirt would look higher on his opponent.

Lornie Kuhle was Riggs’s coach and supervisor for the Battle of the Sexes match. 

He believes Riggs was the right participant for the competition – and never merely due to his tennis expertise. “Bobby Riggs was just about like P.T. Barnum – he was a consummate promoter,” he tells The Submit. “He would make statements like “I consider ladies ought to keep within the bed room and within the kitchen” and girls would boil after they learn these items. You wouldn’t consider the poison pen letters Bobby obtained. 

“But it surely was all tongue in cheek for Bobby,” provides Kuhle, now 83 and dwelling close to San Diego.

Billie Jean King isn’t so certain, notably contemplating the wide-spread inequality ladies then confronted at each degree of society. “Perhaps he even believed in all of the issues he was saying, I don’t know,” she says, “however a lot of what Bobby mentioned and did in 1973 wouldn’t be tolerated as we speak.” 

“However in 1973 ladies had been paid 56.6% of what males earned, and girls of coloration made even much less. We couldn’t even get a bank card with no man’s signature on the appliance; we had been second class residents.  

“That’s a part of the explanation he received away with it.”

The publicity blitz labored wonders — notably when it got here to the underside line.

Whereas the winner would take all the $100,000 prize on supply (the equal of almost $700,000 as we speak), Riggs ensured he wouldn’t go dwelling empty-handed by signing endorsement offers with American Categorical, Hai Karate aftershave and the snacks firm Nabisco.

King, in the meantime, secured sponsorship with Sunbeam hair curling irons.

Come match day, there have been 30,472 followers crammed into the Houston Astrodome – the most important ever attendance for a tennis match. And the celebrity-laden entrance row, which included singers Glen Campbell and Andy Williams together with actors Janet Leigh and Rod Steiger, made it appear extra like a prize battle.

At dwelling, in the meantime, a TV viewers of 90 million folks watched the motion. To place that in context, simply 53 million watched that yr’s Tremendous Bowl between the Miami Dolphins and Washington Redskins (Miami gained 14-7).

With the 170-piece College of Houston marching band ramping up the ambiance, Bobby Riggs entered the world on a carriage pulled by “Bobby’s Bosom Buddies,” a gaggle of native ladies who had been picked for the half on account of their bust dimension. 

King was additionally carried on to the courtroom, accompanied by the band taking part in the Helen Reddy feminist traditional “I Am Lady.”

However even the match announcer, ABC’s Howard Cosell, discovered himself dragged right down to Riggs’s tawdry degree. “And right here comes Billie Jean King . . . a really engaging younger woman,” he mentioned. “Typically you get the sensation that if she ever let her hair develop right down to her shoulders, took her glasses off, you’d have anyone vying for a Hollywood display check.” 

Becoming a member of Cosell within the commentary field that day was King’s good friend, doubles accomplice and Corridor of Famer, Rosie Casals. She says Riggs’s and Cosell’s misogynist angle was typical of the time. “Simply hearken to the printed and also you’ll know,” says Casals, now 74, who now runs the Love & Love Tennis Basis in Southern California.

For Casals, although, Riggs performed his function to perfection. “After all, he was a chauvinist pig – at the very least he acted that manner to be able to get the match,” she says. 

“However I’m unsure he really felt that manner – he was all the time respectful to Billie Jean and me.”

Over-confident and underprepared, Riggs, the bookies’ favourite, was no match for King and with the world watching, she routed her opponent in straight units, successful 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 and inflicting a humiliating defeat on the 55-year-old.  

Later, Riggs would describe the competition as “essentially the most disappointing, disheartening expertise of my life.”

Billie Jean King, in the meantime, merely couldn’t conceive of another end result. “I knew I needed to win,” she says. “There was a lot on the road. The way forward for ladies’s tennis was relying on me. The second wave of the ladies’s motion was at its peak they usually had been relying on me.  

“There was a lot stress, however I like stress – and stress is privilege.”

Regardless of Riggs’s persistent provocation and really public defeat, King and Riggs grew to become agency buddies within the years to come back. Each time they met, they might usually relive the match and debate the lasting affect of the Battle of the Sexes sport.

When Riggs was dying from prostate most cancers in 1976-77, the pair remained in contact. 

On the day earlier than he died, for instance, King referred to as Riggs to seek out him weak and barely in a position to converse. “His final phrases to her earlier than he handed away had been ‘we actually made a distinction, didn’t we?’ recollects Lornie Kuhle. 

Bobby Riggs died on Oct. 25, 1995, aged 77. 

Earlier than he handed away, he and Kuhle based the Bobby Riggs Tennis Membership and Museum in Encinitas, California to assist increase consciousness of prostate most cancers, in addition to to show his many trophies, medals and reminiscences, together with gadgets from the notorious Battle of the Sexes many years earlier.

For Kuhle, who now runs the USTA Billie Jean King‘s Ladies Nationwide Championships, the Battle of the Sexes turned out to be a victory for each gamers. “Billie Jean’s trigger was a lot greater and it grew to become a milestone for girls’s rights. She was on a campaign and it meant every little thing on the planet for her to win,” he says. These victories would nonetheless take time to materialize, nevertheless: It was solely in 2007 that girls lastly obtained the identical pay as males in professional tennis’ 4 Grand Slam occasions.

“Had Bobby gained the match it will’ve been perpetually buried within the annals of historical past. However shedding perpetuated his legacy too,” Kuhle continues. “Title one different tennis participant from 50 years in the past that they nonetheless discuss nearly day by day?”

Rosie Casals, in the meantime, believes the ramifications of the match can’t be underestimated. It was, and nonetheless is, the most important and most impactful match within the twentieth century,” she says.

“[But] I’m glad it turned out the way in which it did. A loss would have set ladies and girls’s tennis again 20 years or extra.”

For Billie Jean King, nevertheless, the Battle of the Sexes — which was additional immortalized within the hit 2017 film of the identical identify — stays “each important and historic” and barely a day goes by with out somebody asking her about it. 

And there’s a cause for that.

“As I spoke with folks within the days, weeks and months after the match, I noticed ladies who felt empowered for the primary time. And the boys who talked to me, many had tears of their eyes, and realized they needed the identical alternatives for his or her daughters as their sons,” says King, who’s not too long ago come beneath hearth for her assist of transgender athletes in feminine sports activities.

“So, the legacy of the match is and was all about social change.  

“We modified the hearts and minds of individuals.”