For $500,000, Even the Loser of Martina-Connors Can Laugh

When Bobby Riggs played Billie Jean King nearly 20 years ago, it was a tennis match for gender pride. When Jimmy Connors plays Martina Navratilova on Friday night in Las Vegas, it will be a tennis match for laughs.

Also laughable is the amount of money involved. The winner will take home about $1 million, which will include the $500,000 winner-take-all purse and a reportedly similar amount just for showing up. The loser will have to settle for the $500,000 in appearance money.

That means that if Connors wins, as most of the Las Vegas betting hotshots say he will, he will have made nearly 12% of his career earnings of $8,455,885 in one low-pressure, gimmick-filled, yuk-it-up night of tennis.

The gimmicks include Connors getting just one serve, Navratilova getting a wider court--she gets half the width of the doubles alley--to shoot at and Riggs himself in the broadcast booth.

The hype would make Don King proud. Connors is quoted as saying that having only one serve is a huge handicap, leaving the assumption that it will keep the match close. Reports have Martina practicing hard against men to get used to the harder hitting. Riggs and Connors even made a TV commercial in which Connors has trouble getting a word in edgewise. No upset there.

The one thing that makes sense about this match is that the main sponsor for this clash of 35-year-old woman and 40-year-old man is an analgesic.

So, viewers can fix all that Friday night by subscribing to the pay-for-view telecast, already labeled, among other things, “Battle of the Sexes III” and “Battle of the Champions.” An unofficial label might be, “Battle of the Tennis Rest Home.”