(Paris) The exhibition match scheduled for December 28 in Dubai between world number 1 Aryna Sabalenka and Australian Nick Kyrgios is hardly comparable to the famous “Battle of the Sexes” which pitted Bobby Riggs against Billie Jean King in 1973, the latter judged on Thursday.

“The only thing in common” with this match won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 by the American in front of more than 30,000 spectators and tens of millions of television viewers, “is that one of the players is a man and the other a woman,” said “BJK” in an interview with the BBC, the broadcaster of the Kyrgios-Sabalenka match.

“For the rest”, the American tennis legend, now 82 years old, sees no similarity between the two matches, even if the promoters of the Dubai duel also called it “The battle of the sexes”.

“Our match was about social change […] this is not the case” of the confrontation between Kyrgios and Sabalenka, insisted Billie Jean King while the women’s circuit is now well established and the financial allocations paid to women have increased significantly since the 1970s.

PHOTO NG HAN GUAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES

Nick Kyrgios

“I hope it’s a great match and I obviously hope Sabalenka wins – but it’s just not the same. » In 1973, “I knew I had to beat him (Riggs, Editor’s note) in the name of societal change, I had a lot of reasons to win. It was a very political match,” concluded BJK.

The rules will also be different, since Sabalenka’s half of the court will have a surface area 9% smaller than that of Kyrgios, each player will be entitled to only one serve and the match will be played in two winning sets.

“I faced Bobby in three winning sets, played on a normal court,” compared Billie Jean King in reference to her 1973 match.

“I told him ‘look, I either face you on a regular basis or I don’t face you’ and Bobby loved that,” she added.

Another big difference: the American was 29 years old and Riggs 55 years old at the time of the “Battle of the Sexes”, where Sabalenka (27 years old) and Kyrgios (30 years old) are both still active players, even if the Australian has played very few official matches since 2022, the year he reached the Wimbledon final.