Longreads Best of 2013 Postscript: New Questions About a Legendary Tennis Match
The Match Maker
Don Van Natta Jr. | ESPN | August 2013 | 34 minutes (8,461 words)
Don Van Natta Jr. (@DVNJr) is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine.
My story, The Match Maker, was online at ESPN.com only a few hours on Aug. 25 when I heard from a California man who shrugged at the possibility that tennis champ and American hustler Bobby Riggs had thrown the famous September 1973 Battle of the Sexes match. The man’s name is Russell Boyd, and he claimed Bobby Riggs had talked openly and repeatedly with him, back in June 1973, about his intention to lose his upcoming match against Billie Jean King at the Houston Astrodome. “I didn’t realize at the time that it was such a serious matter of him playing Billie Jean King,” Boyd, 56, told me, “and that he was actually expected to make an effort to win.” Read more…

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