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One of Billie Jean's best assets was Riggs himself, who never really got around to keeping his promise of doing a full month of hard training before the match. There were too many blondes to squeeze, too many reporters to hustle, too many products to hawk (TIME cover, Sept. 10). In the days before the match, Riggs skylarked around Houston, trying to build up the gate and have some laughs. He beat Dr. Denton Cooley, the noted heart surgeon (the purse: $100 and a free medical checkup, in which Riggs got high marks). He played one of his handicap farces with a Memphis shoe salesman, picking up a fast $100, and then took $300 in a swift one set match from Larry King, Billie Jean's husband. Billie Jean, meanwhile, was training hard by lifting weights to strengthen her ailing knee and by playing tournament tennis against the best women players around.
When it was finally over, Riggs had lost everything except his sense of humor. "At least," he said, "I had enough gas left to jump over the net." Then he and Billie Jean posed one more time for photographers, who naturally demanded that they smooch. "I'm liable to turn you on," Riggs told her. King took the risk, responding, after several encores:
"They're good kisses." At which Riggs jumped up, yelling: "Hey! She took it back! She says I'm not a creep any more."
London Bridge. Maybe not, but neither is he the pig to beat any more.
To paraphrase Shakespeare and Sam Goldwyn, the match was a performance full of tinsel and glamour, signifying nothing—except that the hustle is over.
Bobby's latest con has run its brief course. He automatically called for a rematch, insisting, "I feel I would do better next time." But his heart was hardly in it. Billie Jean's initial response: "Give me 24 hours and a beer to think it over."
Meanwhile, Promoter Jerry Perenchio is talking up a second Court-Riggs contest, this time in Australia—if anyone is interested.
Bobby is also threatening to make partly good his promise to jump from the Pasadena Bridge if he lost (he has substituted the London Bridge, now situated in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., a leap that would presumably cause him no injury). But where would the spotlights be?
No, the circus trappings of the Bobby Riggs Traveling Chauvinist Pig & Nostrum Show—the chairs on the court, the pails of water, the poodles, the vitamin pills, the Hai Karate aftershave—have been gathered, and the carnival tents have been struck by Billie Jean King's rampaging racket.