“They’ll all just be standing around telling each other where they were the night I beat Bobby Riggs,” – When asked what people at her funeral would say.
On September 20th, 1973 two tennis stars, Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King, faced each other in an exhibition match most popular as the “Battle of the Sexes”. Bobby Riggs, who at one point, was known as the best tennis player in the world challenged multiple female tennis players to a match with misogynistic comments, claiming women don’t have the emotional and physical ability to compete in a game of tennis with him and that “the best way to handle women is to keep them pregnant and barefoot.” His first match was with Margaret Court, then World no.1, who lost to him in what was known as the “Mother’s Day Massacre”. Then 55-year old Riggs went on to challenge Billie Jean King, and the match gathered over 30,000 audience in the Houston Astrodome and also a lot of media attention with celebrities and stars taking sides and Bobby Riggs getting multiple endorsement deals. King won the first set 6-4, again the second set 6-3 and then finally the third set at 6-3 too. Defeating Riggs turned King into a female superstar athlete overnight, uncommon to those times. It was considered a huge win for female athletes and also majorly boosted womens’ self-esteem and is still considered a very important game.