Next month will mark the 40th anniversary of the "Battle of the Sexes" between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King, and there is apparently a new allegation that Riggs threw the match, with long odds in his favor, to pay off his mafia gambling debts.
These allegations have surfaced before, although I guess the current story involves a person who has come forward for the first time, and I don't care much one way or the other about the speculation. It is still all hearsay. Also, I feel kind of dirty getting my news from Yahoo.com. There was one little item that caught my eye, which was supposedly included as support for the new allegations, but had the exact opposite effect with me. Serena Williams was quoted, completely irrelevantly, as saying that she would lose to Andy Murray 6-0, 6-0. Well, hell, Andy Murray is a top tennis player. Bobby Riggs was already a has been in 1973. His 1939 Wimbledon win was 34 years in the past.
Whether Riggs threw the match or not, comparing Williams-Murray to King-Riggs is absurd. For some reason, it reminds me of a recent interview given by one of my two all-time favorite sports stars, Bill Russell (the other is Muhammad Ali). The interviewer asked Russell how he thought he would do against today's NBA players. How many points per game did he think he would average? Russell said probably about 10 points. The interviewer, no doubt expecting more braggadocio, was shocked. What?! Only ten points? "Well," said Russell, you have to remember that I'm almost seventy-nine years old."
old."
1 comment:
Say it ain't so!! Riggs didn't throw the match...but I remember what a big deal it was, and set up by his win over Margaret ???.
Bill Russell is one of my favorite people. He just says what comes to mind, forget about all the suits that are examining what he says. And articulate.
His relationship with Celtics fans and the media over the years went from one extreme to the other, and is pretty interesting.
One thing I remember from his brief broadcast career was his laugh. Always ready, and contagious.
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