In an event billed as tennis’s latest “Battle of the Sexes,” Aryna Sabalenka, the No. 1-ranked women’s tennis player in the world, will take on Nick Kyrgios, who’s currently ranked No. 673 on the men’s tour, on December 28, 2025, in Dubai.

“This is about respect, rivalry and reimagining what equality in sport can look like,” said Stuart Duguid, who, along with tennis great Naomi Osaka, co-founded Evolve, the sports agency behind the event.

“I’ll try my best to kick his ass,” Sabalenka said at a September 2025 press conference.

“She’s not going to beat me,” Kyrgios responded. “Do you really think I have to try 100 per cent?”

Evolve has promoted the Dubai event as a sequel to the iconic 1973 “Battle of the Sexes,” in which Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs.

But as critical scholars of sport, we see important differences between the two contests. For one, there are the rules: Different court dimensions, service restrictions and scoring systems. What’s more, the two events’ political and cultural contexts set them even further apart. While King’s victory is viewed as a feminist triumph over entrenched sexism, neither Sabalenka nor Kyrgios seem to be playing for anything beyond the court.

It makes us wonder whether women – and women’s sports more specifically – have anything to gain from this latest battle.

The feminist movement of the early 1970s saw American women fight for better rights, opportunities, rewards, reproductive freedoms and bodily autonomy. It also sought access to and equality in sports. Women’s tennis led the way, as King and others bravely formed their own tour, unionised and negotiated for equal pay at the US Open.

Riggs – a 55-year-old ex-champion and self-proclaimed “male chauvinist pig” – was a noisy antagonist. He maintained that better pay should go to men like him on the senior tour, not to women. To prove it – and to bully his way back into the limelight – Riggs pestered the 29-year-old King to play him.

“You not only cannot beat a top male player,” he needled, “you can’t beat me, a tired old man.”

King refused.

“We didn’t need him; we were making it on our own merits,” she later said.

Billie Jean King........

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