Staff Writer| Florida Times-Union
Did historic tennis match just settle Riggs' gambling debt?
It was 40 years ago next month that women's tennis champ Billy Jean King, 29, routed Bobby Riggs, 55, in the "Battle of The Sexes.''
The well-hyped and anticipated match, televised live to more than 30 million and played before the largest crowd to watch a tennis match in the U.S., remains an iconic sporting event, transcending tennis.
Now come revelations, in a fascinating story by ESPN.com senior writer Don Van Natta Jr., that King's surprisingly easy 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 victory may have been fixed.
That Riggs, a notorious gambler who bet on anything and everything, tanked the match because a) he owed mob bookmakers $100,000 and/or b) he felt he could make substantially more money in a rematch (which King would refuse to give him). That's what hustlers do.
Riggs denied it before his death in 1995, and King, to this day, doesn't believe the allegations. But enough people, including Riggs' son, several former top men's tennis players, and a man who said he saw Riggs meet with the mobsters, give the allegations plausibility. That and the fact that Riggs beat top-ranked women's player Margaret Court 6-2, 6-1 four months earlier.
Perhaps it's just another conspiracy theory, but as the Sept. 20th anniversary nears, I don't think we've heard the end of this. Sounds like a TV movie or a script waiting for the big screen. Let's give Oliver Stone first dibs to direct.
CUSTOMERS NOT A-OK WITH A-ROD GROCERY
Thirteen years ago, Ricardo Rodriguez changed the name of his Brooklyn bodega to A-Rod Grocery. Now he's looking for a new name after too many of his customers weighed in on Alex Rodriguez's performance-enhancing drug scandal.
"I got tired of all these people complaining," Rodriguez, no relation to the Yankees third baseman, told the New York Daily News. "Why should I have to listen to all of them? It's not fair. I don't even know the guy."
The store's original name was Pena Grocery. Rodriguez hasn't picked a new one yet.
