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As many of those inside the tennis bubble commenced with the pearl-clutching about reputational damage and integrity and the potential harm to women’s tennis, the “Battle of the Sexes” exhibition between Nick Kyrgios and Aryna Sabalenka carried on Sunday in Dubai regardless.

That’s right: it was an exhibition, no more helpful or harmful than most of the exhibitions people tend to regularly complain about. Even if it had been crazy good fun and wickedly competitive, people would have ripped it. So it goes.

It just … wasn’t that serious.

There are some highly suboptimal looks in there, from Kyrgios’ past treatment of women, to the fact that the Middle East isn’t exactly ground zero for women’s equality. But those virtue ships sailed awhile ago, it seemed, in pursuit of the almighty dollar. That some might criticize Sabalenka for taking on a gig that “might reflect poorly on women’s tennis” is also a sailed ship. In 2025, players look out for No. 1.

Like Six Kings, and Laver Cup, and Macau and Miami, US Open “mixed doubles” and all of the upcoming made-up events during the week before the Australian Open, it was about money. And entertainment. No more, no less. With the added twist of having a woman playing a man.

Only the stanniest of women’s tennis stans believe that women play tennis as well as men do.

Fact check: they don’t. This doesn’t mean the women don’t play great tennis; it simply means that men are, on the whole, more powerful, serve better and are more explosive in their movement than women.

To admit that, as many women – including Sabalenka – have freely done, is not a sin. It’s a reality.

So what was the takeaway from Sunday’s match, which lasted just about an hour and 15 minutes and resulted in an expected 6-3, 6-3 Kyrgios victory?

Well, it was fairly predictable.

– Kyrgios, who hasn’t played a match since March and has barely played in three years, looked gassed and broken within a half hour. Which doesn’t bode well for yet another planned comeback, beginning in a week’s time in Brisbane.

– Sabalenka looked fantastic. She hit every shot extremely well. She served well despite having to back up several feet off the baseline to compensate for the shorter court on her side. And she handled the heavier, spinnier man’s ball impressively, taking it on the rise and hitting her share of winners. She looked ready to start 2026.

Both players played their parts

Kyrgios, for the most part, was uncharacteristically smiley. The man whose go-to expression on court and for selfies ranges between surly and smirky was grinning ear to ear a lot of the time. It was a bit off-putting, to be honest.

The 30-year-old Aussie was overwhelming in his deference to, and praise for, Sabalenka. She is his agency mate at Evolve, the agency founded by Stu Duguid and Naomi Osaka that Osaka will be leaving in just a few days’ time – although, we presume, leaving her significant financial investment behind.

Sabalenka, for her part, is a rare woman at the top of the game who will readily engage in the silliness surrounding this type of thing. She entered the arena wearing a full-length, shimmery trench coat, to the strains of the theme from “Rocky”.

What makes her a great No. 1 for the world outside the tennis bubble is that she’s quite game to play along and bask in whatever kind of attention comes out of it. It takes nothing away from Iga Swiatek or Coco Gauff to acknowledge that neither of them would have been comfortable in that role; they’re just different people.

She was serious, for the most part. She had to be, just to keep up. She ran down every drop shot. She kept up with whatever pace Kyrgios was giving her quite well. And she looked genuinely annoyed that she lost.

Not the “real” Battle

The clash between sporting icon Billie Jean King and hustler Bobby Riggs back in 1973 is folklore now. And obviously, with women’s tennis in its infancy, it had meaning and impact even though King was 29 and Riggs a broken-down 55-year-old who, it turned out, had bet on himself to lose.

This wasn’t the first reboot.

Martina Navratilova, then 36 and Jimmy Connors, then 40, tried to recreate this in 1992, almost exactly a year after Connors’ inspiring run to the US Open semifinals at age 39.

Connors had one serve, Navratilova two. And he had to play within the singles lines while Navratilova was allowed to use the doubles alleys, which were half the usual width.

It was called the “FlexAll Battle of Champions”, played outdoors at Caesar’s Palace. (Flex-All, appropriately, was a line of pain-relief products).

They had famous boxing ring announcer Michael Buffer (LET’S GET READY TO RUUUUUUUUMBLE!!!) as the master of ceremonies. And they also were set to play three full sets.

“What this really all about,” said program host Barry Tompkins at the time, “was money”. The winner took home half a million (about $1.16 million US in today’s dollars), plus an even bigger appearance fee for both: $650K each.

Navratilova had turned down previous offers to take on John McEnroe and Ilie Nastase.

Riggs was on commentary; King was in the crowd, being interviewed.

Connors won, 7-5, 6-2. And no, he didn’t go full out.

(That one, too, involved some wagering on the part of the male protagonist. In his memoir, Connors claims to have put a $1 million bet that he wouldn’t lose more than eight games. He lost … seven).

Some issues on the technical side

For a period of time in the second set, the feed got pretty glitchy, wherever you were watching it.

That was likely a function of the quick setup involved for the event. There was a huge show the previous night starring Sonu Bigam, a “playback singer” from India.

(Yes, we had to look this up. Apparently if you record songs for Bollywood stars to sing in musicals, lip-syncing to your track, you can become a star that fills arenas on your own).

The court, which was very slow, was only laid Sunday morning. That likely explains (beyond the cost) why there were real, live line umpires, with no Hawkeye or challenge system available. That system takes a lot of time to install, and they didn’t have it.

Perhaps, on the technical side, it was equally as rushed. And so there were issues although, by the end, they appeared to be resolved.

They announced a sellout, even though the cheapest tickets went for the equivalent of about $186 CAD. The Coca Cola Arena seats some 17,000. but it appeared they kept the upper deck shut and filled some 6,000 seats.

The crowd was reasonably engaged, at least by the standards of tennis tournaments taking place in the Middle East. But they didn’t pump up the atmosphere much.

The commentators – at least on the U.S. side – did what commentators do when they get hired to work exhibition events. They stayed away from … anything remotely controversial.

Sania Mirza, as the colour analyst, seemed to think her role was to pump up her friend Kyrgios as a player who was still “very young” (at 30) and who, if he could put together a good year or two, still had the ability to win a Grand Slam tournament. And that he was “great for the game”.

Among other whoppers.

It was … a lot.

Piercing the bubble

As much as the purists hate this sort of thing, there surely were positives to take away.

The first was watching Sabalenka in this environment, to see what she could do. She was actually hurt by the “one-serve rule” for both, more than Kyrgios was. His safe, huge kick serve was a big challenge for her, because she doesn’t ever run into it on Tour.

And in the end, it probably wasn’t necessary. Kyrgios understood his role; he wasn’t going to try to blast 130-mph first-serve bombs past her anyway.

Sabalenka, because her half of the court was several feet shorter, actually had to step back well behind the baseline to serve and get her usual rhythm.

All in all, this event got attention well outside the sometimes-claustrophobic little club that tennis perversely prides itself on being. Sometimes, it feels like so many people don’t ever want things to change. And, sometimes, it feels like the tennis family almost wants to keep the sport its own little secret.

The truth is that only when something way out of the ordinary happens, does tennis get media and sports fan attention outside that bubble.

Most of the time, it’s for the wrong reasons.

It’s Novak Djokovic getting locked in a roach motel in downtown Melbourne and then deported out of Australia. It’s a world No. 1 (or former No. 1) failing an anti-doping test.

This time, it was just a one-off, meaningless exhibition that showed off the sport to a different audience. It created a lot of buzz in late December that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise. And who knows, maybe some of the people watching will pay attention to Sabalenka’s quest for the Australian Open title, or Kyrgios’s umpteenth comeback.

As long as they’re watching, there’s really no downside.

Those who take perverse pride in disparaging women’s tenni – women’s sports, generally – as “inferior” will continue to do so. They don’t need this event as fuel. They look for and find plenty, all the time. So from that standpoint it doesn’t do much extra “damage”.

The diehards will have plenty of “real” tennis to watch, starting in less than a week. But no one is going to be talking on the BBC and CNN about the United Cup, or Auckland, or Brisbane.

(Screenshots from the Tennis Channel stream)

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