Riggs was fifty-five in 1973. He was at the end of his career, but took every chance he could to proclaim that women could never be the players men were, they were simply too weak- and they were just women.

Riggs played and beat a champion tennis player named Margaret Court on Mother's Day 1973, and immediately challenged Billie Jean King saying, "I want Billie Jean King. . . . I want the women's lib leader!" Riggs boasted loudly that even the much younger Billie Jean King, at age twenty-nine, was no match for him, by mere virtue of his manhood.

Riggs was just what the women's movement fought against, making a sexist spectacle of himself every chance he got. He wore a tee-shirt that said 'Men's Liberation' and said if he was going to be a male chauvinist pig, he was going to be the number one male chauvinist pig. Rosie Casals, a tennis colleague of King's who would be a commentator at the big match, said Riggs was "an old man who walks like a duck, can't see, can't hear and besides, he's an idiot."

It was a sore spot with Billie Jean King and other women professional sports players that women were paid much more poorly than men. She had won 20 titles at Wimbledon and organized the Women's Tennis Association, a union of women players that improved their bargaining positions. King became the first woman to make more than $100,000 a year in tennis.

The match was held at the Houston Astrodome on September 20, 1973. It drew the largest ever live audience for a tennis match and got prime time TV coverage. 30,472 spectators filled the stadium and an estimated 50 million viewers watched on television. Riggs egged on the crowd by entering the stadium in a carriage pulled by women. Billie Jean King rode in on a red velvet litter carried by University of Houston football players in short togas. But when they hit the courts, the players were all business.

Riggs did his best to finesse the ball, hitting lobs, drop shots and spins. In one of the most talked about events in United States sports history, Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in three straight sets of tennis by wearing him down with long rallies. The scores were 6-4, 6-3, and 6-3. After the game he graciously said, "She was too good, too fast. She returned all my passing shots and made great plays off them."

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