{"id":37358,"date":"2026-01-04T01:50:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T01:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/battle-of-the-sexes-was-not-needed-as-womens-tennis-stands-on-its-own-iga-swiatek\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T01:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T01:50:07","slug":"battle-of-the-sexes-was-not-needed-as-womens-tennis-stands-on-its-own-iga-swiatek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/battle-of-the-sexes-was-not-needed-as-womens-tennis-stands-on-its-own-iga-swiatek\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Battle of the Sexes&#8217; was not needed as women&#8217;s tennis &#8216;stands on its own&#8217; &#8211; Iga Swiatek"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Wimbledon champion Iga Swiatek says tennis did not need the &#8216;Battle of the Sexes&#8217; between Nick Kyrgios and Aryna Sabalenka as the women&#8217;s game &#8220;stands on its own&#8221;.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Women&#8217;s number one Sabalenka and male player Kyrgios faced off in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/tennis\/live\/cre3xyjnr1zt\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">highly publicised exhibition<\/a> in Dubai a week ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kyrgios won the match &#8211; played on a modified court designed to provide a level playing field &#8211; in straight sets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Swiatek says tennis has come a long way since the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/tennis\/articles\/cy95g0q9qrzo\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">original &#8216;Battle of the Sexes&#8217;<\/a> between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in 1973 which highlighted the women&#8217;s game fighting for legitimacy and prize money.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I haven&#8217;t watched [Sabalenka v Kyrgios] because I don&#8217;t watch stuff like that,&#8221; the world number two said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think for sure it attracted a lot of attention. It was entertainment, but I wouldn&#8217;t say that had anything to do with social change or any important topics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think the name was just the same as the one from the Billie Jean King match in &#8217;73. That&#8217;s it. There were no more similarities because I feel like women&#8217;s tennis stands on its own right now.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We have so many great athletes and great stories to present, we don&#8217;t necessarily need to compare to men&#8217;s tennis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Honestly, there doesn&#8217;t need to be any competition.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/tennis\/articles\/c3ed817zd38o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wimbledon champion Iga Swiatek says tennis did not need the &#8216;Battle of the Sexes&#8217; between Nick Kyrgios and Aryna Sabalenka as the women&#8217;s game &#8220;stands on its own&#8221;. Women&#8217;s number one Sabalenka and male player Kyrgios faced off in a highly publicised exhibition in Dubai a week ago. Kyrgios won the match &#8211; played on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37358"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37360,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37358\/revisions\/37360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}