What if Billie Jean King lost?

On September 20, 1973, 55 year old former tennis champ Bobby Riggs faced women's tennis champion Billie Jean King in "The Battle of the Sexes" tennis match. Riggs, used to being a showoff, played up the male chauvinist pig role to the max. King, playing solid tennis, quickly became a symbol for womens rights and a hero to millions of women.

They played in the Houston Astrodome. ABC sports carried the event live with Howard Cosell as the announcer.

Riggs was a former tennis champion back in the 1940's. But over time he had switched from being a serious sportsmen to being a sort of tennis hustler. He saw the match as more of a show than anything. He hardly trained for the match, instead spending his time partying, and on game day was overweight and even worse - overconfident. King, on the other hand, took the match very seriously and trained hard. She also carefully studied films of Riggs playing and learned his strengths and weaknesses.

King won the match 6–4, 6–3, 6–3. Thousands if not millions of women saw the match and it was their inspiration to break out of the mold that male paternalism had forced upon them.

But, what if it hadn't gone that way?

Lets say Riggs, instead of spending his time before the match drinking, partying, and carrying on had took the match seriously and trained hard for King. What if he did beat Billie Jean King that day back in 1973?

How would it have affected the women's rights movement?

Note - no woman has come close to beating a male in a sporting event since. In 1992 there was another "Battle of the Sexes" match between Jimmie Connors and Maria Navitolova. Conners, playing different rules (he only got one serve and gave Navitalova the doubles lanes) and he still beat her in 2 sets. Venus Williams has played a few men in off tournament games and hasnt beaten anyone near the top of the mens category. In 2003 a top female golfer entered a mens PGA tournament and finished around 16th.

What do you all think?
 
On September 20, 1973, 55 year old former tennis champ Bobby Riggs faced women's tennis champion Billie Jean King in "The Battle of the Sexes" tennis match. Riggs, used to being a showoff, played up the male chauvinist pig role to the max. King, playing solid tennis, quickly became a symbol for womens rights and a hero to millions of women.
....
Note - no woman has come close to beating a male in a sporting event since. In 1992 there was another "Battle of the Sexes" match between Jimmie Connors and Maria Navitolova. Conners, playing different rules (he only got one serve and gave Navitalova the doubles lanes) and he still beat her in 2 sets. Venus Williams has played a few men in off tournament games and hasnt beaten anyone near the top of the mens category. In 2003 a top female golfer entered a mens PGA tournament and finished around 16th.

What do you all think?

Operative words here are "55" and "former" as in long ago. I suppose he might have done better, but I just don't see King losing, not without whole hordes of butterflies.

I mean if Riggs trained hard and was at the top of his form, and King had really, really nasty flu, maybe....
 
Well it wasnt exactly a cakewalk for King. Riggs did win a few.

It would be interesting to see the tape of the actual match. Did King take it easy on Riggs?

There is an interesting movie out called "When Bobbie Met Billie" about the match.
 
My response assumes acceptance that long distance swimming is a sport - many people do.

In 1926 a woman, Gertrude Ederle was not only the first woman to swim the English Channel (a distance of approx. 21 miles) but she also beat the existing record, set by a man obviously, by almost 2 hours. Since then the record for the fastest channel swim has been held by a number of women.
 
You are absolutly correct. However, Gertrude Ederle was not engaged in head-to-head, one-on-one competition at the time. That does not diminish her achievement or its significance, it simply puts her achievement into a different catagory. A Riggs victory over King would have reinforced the difference between those two catagories and given fresh credence to the belief that women cannot directly compete against men in sports.
 
the belief that women cannot directly compete against men in sports.
Indeed, M'Lud.

Could it be down to the fact that the vast majority of sports were created by men and thus brawn often features higher than brain? If, like the Olympics, you consider Ice Skating/Dance a sport, women often outperform men in terms of grace, interpretation and composition. It's probably the same in a contest between male teams and female teams in synchronised swimming.
 
My response assumes acceptance that long distance swimming is a sport - many people do.

In 1926 a woman, Gertrude Ederle was not only the first woman to swim the English Channel (a distance of approx. 21 miles) but she also beat the existing record, set by a man obviously, by almost 2 hours. Since then the record for the fastest channel swim has been held by a number of women.

On the other hand, had you told me that this photo was showing your cousin Gordon (instead of Gertrude Ederle), I would have been fooled
:D sorry, I couldn't resist :D

On more a serious ground, you have to take in consideration that there are some differences in the heart-lung system which favour men in activities involving a prolonged fatigue period

Image2.jpg
 
On more a serious ground, you have to take in consideration that there are some differences in the heart-lung system which favour men in activities involving a prolonged fatigue period
Women are hopeless in Marathon races :D
(No jokes about loo stops, please! :))
 
You can look it up on YouTube, their is a video there of King and Riggs talking, it looks like in the 90's, King says because of her winning the match women everywhere were inspired to push for equality because they truly felt equal. She quoted a woman who said after that match the very next day her and her female coworkers went to work and demanded equal pay from the boss - which they got.

Now, would they have done that if King, the top female player, was beaten by a 55 year old man? Women truly would feel like the weaker sex.

My point is this really WAS a major point in history that if it had gone the other way alot of things would have changed.

And BTW, King is quoted somewhere that she felt if Riggs had been in better shape he might have won. Remember just 4 months earlier Riggs had beaten another female champion who was actually rated better than King.
 
Note - no woman has come close to beating a male in a sporting event since. In 1992 there was another "Battle of the Sexes" match between Jimmie Connors and Maria Navitolova. Conners, playing different rules (he only got one serve and gave Navitalova the doubles lanes) and he still beat her in 2 sets. Venus Williams has played a few men in off tournament games and hasnt beaten anyone near the top of the mens category. In 2003 a top female golfer entered a mens PGA tournament and finished around 16th.

What do you all think?

That is discounting certain sports.

In some sailing events, women race with the men and IIRC some women have won events, but sailing isn't a sport I follow. Of course, Dame Ellen McArthur held the round the world record.

Women also compete against men in horsey things, and have won Olympic gold and other major events IIRC.

That's not forgetting Michelle Mouton winning four WRC rallies, and only really losing the title to Walter Roehl due to the unreliability of the Audi Quattro (yes, in a Group B car). There's Danica Patrick's sole IndyCar win (for those that don't follow Indycars, she's gratuitously overhyped), Katherine Legge winning three Atlantics races and a few others.

Also, in the London Marathon recently in several years Paula Radcliffe set a time that was faster than any British man - probably more of a reflection on the state on British men's long distance running ...
 
Doesnt anyone else have an opinion on this? I know its not war based like most topics on here but the event was a major cultural turning point.

No other opinions?
 
Doesnt anyone else have an opinion on this? I know its not war based like most topics on here but the event was a major cultural turning point.


PV,

It was not a major cultural turning point, it was a circus act., and I know because I lived through it.

I was a teenager when the "match" was staged and it was seen as little more than a joke. There were a few clueless boobs of both sexes who bought into the hype, but the majority knew it for what it was: a manufactured television event cynically playing into some mass media-created "war of the sexes" idiocy.

My mother, at the time a very active ERA supporter and still an ardent feminist, was worried the King-Riggs match would set back the cause of equal rights by making the idea a laughing stock and, in a way, her fears were justified.

Riggs was a 55-year-old golf and tennis hustler who hadn't been ranked since the 40s and here was King, a female tennis champion, taking his "challenge" seriously. She trained seriously and gave interviews seriously while Riggs partied 24/7 and put on a macho circus clown act that predated Andrew Dice Clay's act by more than a decade. Riggs, who had been making his living by playing tennis with a frying pan or golf with nothing but a putter, never took the match seriously, bet against himself at Vegas, and even threw a few points during the match while King seemed to think it was Wimbledon. Whereas Riggs played the event for laughs and the pay day it would provide win or lose, King's insistence on taking the match seriously made her and the women's movement she suddenly represented seem all the more clueless and humorless.

Everyone knew King couldn't have beaten a real men's champion, everyone knew the match was a joke, only a very few didn't realize it was a joke, and they were looked on with pity as clueless morons.

It was only well after the match took place that it became to represent what you and many others seem believe it represents. When the match actually occurred, it was a joke. It has only been "sanctified" by the passage of time and the dimming of memory.


Bill
 
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PV,

It was not a major cultural turning point, it was a circus act., and I know because I lived through it.

I was a teenager when the "match" was staged and it was seen as little more than a joke. There were a few clueless boobs of both sexes who bought into the hype, but the majority knew it for what it was: a manufactured television event cynically playing into some mass media-created "war of the sexes" idiocy.

My mother, at the time a very active ERA supporter and still an ardent feminist, was worried the King-Riggs match would set back the cause of equal rights by making the idea a laughing stock and, in a way, her fears were justified.

Riggs was a 55-year-old golf and tennis hustler who hadn't been ranked since the 40s and here was King, a female tennis champion, taking his "challenge" seriously. She trained seriously and gave interviews seriously while Riggs partied 24/7 and put on a macho circus clown act that predated Andrew Dice Clay's act by more than a decade. Riggs, who had been making his living by playing tennis with a frying pan or golf with nothing but a putter, never took the match seriously, bet against himself at Vegas, and even threw a few points during the match while King seemed to think it was Wimbledon. Whereas Riggs played the event for laughs and the pay day it would provide win or lose, King's insistence on taking the match seriously made her and the women's movement she suddenly represented seem all the more clueless and humorless.

Everyone knew King couldn't have beaten a real men's champion, everyone knew the match was a joke, only a very few didn't realize it was a joke, and they were looked on with pity as clueless morons.

It was only well after the match took place that it became to represent what you and many others seem believe it represents. When the match actually occurred, it was a joke. It has only been "sanctified" by the passage of time and the dimming of memory.

Bill

Firstly, you've got a good point, although I think you exaggerate. I lived through that time, too.

Secondly, if she HAD lost, with him being such a train-wreck, it would have been pretty awful.
 
It wasn't particularly close - it was 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. Just one thought here - if it went to five sets, but Billie Jean King still won. Would we see an experiment with women's matches at the slams being five rather than three sets, or four with match tiebreak like seniors?
 
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