ABSTRACT
The “Battle of the Sexes,” which transformed a mere exhibition match into the type of multimedia extravaganza typifying championship contests in the major sports, could only have happened in an era of social ferment; more specifically, in a nation reacting to the massed feminist movement in a highly ambivalent manner. Bobby Riggs, who had risen to one notch below champions such as Don Budge and Bill Tilden in his playing prime, continued to carve out a solid income from tennis in his later years as something of a media huckster. In the early 1970s he captured the public's attention by accusing the women's tennis world of pawning a distinctly inferior product off on sports fans, offering to take on the best female players to prove his point.
