A pivotal second in tennis historical past was the middle of a “Saturday Night time Dwell” skit that additionally factors to a serious debate at present happening throughout the nation as we speak.
The “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match in 1973 was one in every of tennis Corridor of Famer Billie Jean King’s defining moments of her profession, as she, at 29, defeated 55-year-old Bobby Riggs, a three-time Wimbledon champion and world no. 1 in his prime, who boasted that males’s tennis was far superior to ladies’s.
Utilizing Netflix’s “Untold” collection, which dives into sports activities tales from years previous, as the muse, SNL forged member Sarah Sherman and host Jason Mamoa star within the skit that begins by highlighting the actual tennis match that occurred.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

Billie Jean King returns a shot towards Bobby Riggs throughout a tennis match known as Battle of the Sexes II on the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, Sept. 20, 1973. (Deal with Sport/Getty Pictures)
“It’s been 50 years since Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs within the ‘Battle of the Sexes,’” a narrator begins. “She shocked the world and stood as much as misogyny within the tennis neighborhood. However what if I instructed you she wasn’t the primary?”
Enter “Charna Lee Diamond,” Sherman’s character within the skit, who says, “If any man thinks they’ve what it takes to beat me, let’s play.”
Riggs was the one to problem King for his or her match. After King initially declined, Riggs confronted Margaret Courtroom as an alternative.
Courtroom, at 30 years previous and being a world primary herself, misplaced to Riggs in straight units.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1973, TENNIS STAR BILLIE JEAN KING WINS ‘BATTLE OF THE SEXES’ IN HOUSTON.
Within the SNL skit, promoters tried discovering the precise suitor to face Diamond, and that was Mamoa’s character, “Ronnie Dunster,” who was the “largest males’s tennis participant” on the time.
The skit’s match was held within the Houston Astrodome – the precise website for the King-Riggs match in 1973 – the place Dunster and Diamond had been pitted towards one another. However on Dunster’s first serve, the ball goes proper by means of Diamond’s abdomen. When she asks to serve once more, it decapitates her.

Retired tennis participant Bobby Riggs (1918-1995) is carried to the courtroom by 4 ladies forward of the “Battle of the Sexes” match towards Billie Jean King on the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, on Sept. 20, 1973. (UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Pictures)
“We must always’ve seen it coming,” a “sports activities journalist” says within the skit. “He was 300 kilos of pure muscle, and he or she was one of many lowest-ranked feminine gamers on the time.”
In fact, this was for laughs from the SNL staff, and it generated loads from the reside viewers that may be heard within the background. Nevertheless it additionally factors to the present debate about trans ladies taking part in towards ladies in ladies’s sports activities.
The argument from these on the aspect of the “Save Girls’s Sports activities” motion is that trans ladies, or organic males, put ladies at a drawback in sporting occasions because of genetic variations.
BILLIE JEAN KING CELEBRATES 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF US OPEN OFFERING EQUAL PRIZE MONEY TO FEMALE, MALE COMPETITORS
This has led to laws in numerous states, banning organic males from competing in ladies’s sports activities at numerous ranges. It’s additionally induced outrage from the opposite aspect of the argument, these believing inclusion for all primarily based on how that individual identifies is how sports activities ought to exist.
King is a tennis icon and gender equality advocate who performed a paramount function in bringing equality for girls’s tennis participant to the game, which the “Battle of the Sexes” did.
Seeing Riggs flaunt his victory over Courtroom, King accepted the problem. She admitted on the time the match was far more than proving ladies can compete on the highest degree.
“I believed it will set us again 50 years if I didn’t win that match. It could spoil the ladies’s tour and have an effect on all ladies’s vanity,” she mentioned on the time.

Tennis star Billie Jean King waves to the gang as she is carried into the Houston Astrodome in Texas to compete within the “Battle of the Sexes” on Sept. 20, 1973. (UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Pictures)
King beat Riggs, 6-4, 6-3. 6-3, profitable the $100,000 prize on the Houston Astrodome on Sept. 20, 1973.
King was part of the Unique 9, a gaggle of ladies’s tennis gamers who battled inequality in pay in comparison with males, that satisfied cigarette model Virginia Slims to sponsor their very own collection. They created their very own tournaments, touring in all places they noticed match.
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That has since became the Girls’s Tennis Affiliation, which nonetheless stands as we speak, reaching its fiftieth anniversary in June.
A pivotal second in tennis historical past was the middle of a “Saturday Night time Dwell” skit that additionally factors to a serious debate at present happening throughout the nation as we speak.
The “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match in 1973 was one in every of tennis Corridor of Famer Billie Jean King’s defining moments of her profession, as she, at 29, defeated 55-year-old Bobby Riggs, a three-time Wimbledon champion and world no. 1 in his prime, who boasted that males’s tennis was far superior to ladies’s.
Utilizing Netflix’s “Untold” collection, which dives into sports activities tales from years previous, as the muse, SNL forged member Sarah Sherman and host Jason Mamoa star within the skit that begins by highlighting the actual tennis match that occurred.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

Billie Jean King returns a shot towards Bobby Riggs throughout a tennis match known as Battle of the Sexes II on the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, Sept. 20, 1973. (Deal with Sport/Getty Pictures)
“It’s been 50 years since Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs within the ‘Battle of the Sexes,’” a narrator begins. “She shocked the world and stood as much as misogyny within the tennis neighborhood. However what if I instructed you she wasn’t the primary?”
Enter “Charna Lee Diamond,” Sherman’s character within the skit, who says, “If any man thinks they’ve what it takes to beat me, let’s play.”
Riggs was the one to problem King for his or her match. After King initially declined, Riggs confronted Margaret Courtroom as an alternative.
Courtroom, at 30 years previous and being a world primary herself, misplaced to Riggs in straight units.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1973, TENNIS STAR BILLIE JEAN KING WINS ‘BATTLE OF THE SEXES’ IN HOUSTON.
Within the SNL skit, promoters tried discovering the precise suitor to face Diamond, and that was Mamoa’s character, “Ronnie Dunster,” who was the “largest males’s tennis participant” on the time.
The skit’s match was held within the Houston Astrodome – the precise website for the King-Riggs match in 1973 – the place Dunster and Diamond had been pitted towards one another. However on Dunster’s first serve, the ball goes proper by means of Diamond’s abdomen. When she asks to serve once more, it decapitates her.

Retired tennis participant Bobby Riggs (1918-1995) is carried to the courtroom by 4 ladies forward of the “Battle of the Sexes” match towards Billie Jean King on the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, on Sept. 20, 1973. (UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Pictures)
“We must always’ve seen it coming,” a “sports activities journalist” says within the skit. “He was 300 kilos of pure muscle, and he or she was one of many lowest-ranked feminine gamers on the time.”
In fact, this was for laughs from the SNL staff, and it generated loads from the reside viewers that may be heard within the background. Nevertheless it additionally factors to the present debate about trans ladies taking part in towards ladies in ladies’s sports activities.
The argument from these on the aspect of the “Save Girls’s Sports activities” motion is that trans ladies, or organic males, put ladies at a drawback in sporting occasions because of genetic variations.
BILLIE JEAN KING CELEBRATES 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF US OPEN OFFERING EQUAL PRIZE MONEY TO FEMALE, MALE COMPETITORS
This has led to laws in numerous states, banning organic males from competing in ladies’s sports activities at numerous ranges. It’s additionally induced outrage from the opposite aspect of the argument, these believing inclusion for all primarily based on how that individual identifies is how sports activities ought to exist.
King is a tennis icon and gender equality advocate who performed a paramount function in bringing equality for girls’s tennis participant to the game, which the “Battle of the Sexes” did.
Seeing Riggs flaunt his victory over Courtroom, King accepted the problem. She admitted on the time the match was far more than proving ladies can compete on the highest degree.
“I believed it will set us again 50 years if I didn’t win that match. It could spoil the ladies’s tour and have an effect on all ladies’s vanity,” she mentioned on the time.

Tennis star Billie Jean King waves to the gang as she is carried into the Houston Astrodome in Texas to compete within the “Battle of the Sexes” on Sept. 20, 1973. (UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Pictures)
King beat Riggs, 6-4, 6-3. 6-3, profitable the $100,000 prize on the Houston Astrodome on Sept. 20, 1973.
King was part of the Unique 9, a gaggle of ladies’s tennis gamers who battled inequality in pay in comparison with males, that satisfied cigarette model Virginia Slims to sponsor their very own collection. They created their very own tournaments, touring in all places they noticed match.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
That has since became the Girls’s Tennis Affiliation, which nonetheless stands as we speak, reaching its fiftieth anniversary in June.