Iga Swiatek says women’s tennis does not need ‘Battle of the Sexes’

Six-time Grand Slam champion Iga Swiatek on Saturday (January 3, 2026) mentioned she noticed little level to the “Battle of the Sexes” match and that ladies’s tennis has nothing extra to show.

World primary Aryna Sabalenka and Australian Nick Kyrgios confronted off in a extremely publicised and controversial exhibition match in Dubai per week in the past.

Kyrgios received 6-3, 6-3 with Sabalenka’s facet of the court docket shrunk by 9 p.c in an try to limit his energy and pace benefit.

It bore little resemblance to the era-defining 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” encounter between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.

Again then, there was extra at stake with the nascent girls’s skilled tour, arrange by King, preventing for legitimacy and prize cash.

“I haven’t watched as a result of I don’t watch stuff like that,” world quantity two Swiatek mentioned in Sydney, the place she opens her season on the United Cup.

Nick Kyrgios, left, and Aryna Sabalenka work together on the internet throughout their Battle of the Sexes match, in Dubai, on December 28, 2025.
| Picture Credit score:
AP

“I feel for certain it attracted a whole lot of consideration. It was leisure, however I wouldn’t say that had something to do with social change or any essential matters.

“I feel the title was simply the identical because the one from the Billie Jean King match in ‘73. That’s it. There have been no extra similarities as a result of I really feel like girls’s tennis stands by itself proper now.

“We have now so many nice athletes and nice tales to current, we don’t essentially want to match to males’s tennis.

“Actually, there doesn’t have to be any competitors.”

The Polish star, who’s making ready for the Australian Open this month, the one Grand Slam she is but to win, mentioned the mixed-teams United Cup was a greater option to have a good time males’s and ladies’s tennis.

“I feel really occasions like this one, United Cup, brings tennis collectively, and WTA followers and ATP followers can watch this occasion with a lot pleasure,”” she mentioned.

“Seeing additionally singles gamers that normally don’t have house to play blended doubles collectively, taking part in these form of matches, I feel that is really what makes our sport rather more fascinating and higher.”

Ties on the United Cup comprise one males’s and one girls’s singles and a blended doubles, with group winners in every host metropolis — Perth and Sydney — advancing to the quarter-finals together with the most effective runners-up.

Sabalenka this week defended taking part in Kyrgios, saying tennis must “maintain it recent, maintain it new, maintain it enjoyable”.

“I feel I might undoubtedly do it once more,” she mentioned. “I really like revenge and I don’t like to depart it the way in which it’s.”