Hold the presses–we have a final result. Riggs beat King, 6-3, 6-4. Bobby barely broke a sweat.
Okay, the victim wasn’t Billie Jean. It was her husband, Larry King. On September 18th, just two days away from the main event, Bobby Riggs hustled Mr. King for $300. Larry wasn’t much of a tennis player, though he did enter a few husband-and-wife doubles events with Billie Jean in the mid-60s. Bobby spotted him three games in the first set, four games in the second. You can do the math: The man of the hour won twelve games in a row.
In fairness, Larry was probably exhausted. The public knew him as Billie Jean’s “husband and business partner”–not necessarily in that order. He ran interference for Madame Superstar, handling travel arrangements and ferreting out business opportunities for his wife. The job was never more demanding that it was this week. Everyone wanted a piece of Billie Jean, and the woman herself was hiding out.
The Kings had spent years turning over every leaf, identifying sources of funding and promotion for women’s tennis. Now, the phone never stopped ringing. Jerry Perenchio, the producer staging the match, had taken to calling Thursday night’s spectacle a $2 million operation. Nominally, it was winner-take-all, for $100,000. In actuality, each player was guaranteed another $100,000 for broadcast rights. Sponsorships went up from there.
Way up.
“If this were a Broadway show,” wrote Grace Lichtenstein in the New York Times, “the title would be ‘Money!'”
Television advertising spots had sold out almost instantly. Billie Jean would earn $25,000 for appearing in one of them, a hair-roller commercial for Sunbeam. Riggs was getting $75,000 from Hai Karate, the official cologne of the Happy Hustler. Nabisco paid him $20,000 to flog its Sugar Daddy candy bar. The Kings got a cut of sales from the ubiquitous pro-Billie Jean pins and t-shirts.
“Don’t feel sorry for the loser,” said Perenchio.
He meant Bobby or Billie Jean, of course. But Larry King, one of Riggs’s many victims in the days before the Battle, would also do just fine.
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This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.
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