Beacon: It turns out the infamous battle of the sexes—in which the 30-year-old King routed the 55-year-old Bobby Riggs—wasn’t a legit match. Allegedly, the fix was in:
Ragano explained that Riggs “had the first match already in the works … and the second match he knew would follow because of Billie Jean King’s popularity and everything that it would be kind of a slam dunk to get her to play him bragging about beating Margaret Court,” Shaw says Ragano told the men. Shaw also says he heard Ragano mention an unidentified mob man in Chicago who would help engineer the proposed fix.
“Mr. Ragano was emphatic,” Shaw recalls. “Riggs had assured him that the fix would be in — he would beat Margaret Court and then he would go in the tank” against King, but Riggs pledged he’d “make it appear that it was on the up and up.” …
Finally, Shaw says, the men asked about Riggs’ price for the fix. “Ragano says, ‘Well, he’s going to [get] peanuts compared to what we’re going to make out of this, so he has asked for his debt to be erased.’” Riggs “has also asked for a certain amount of money to be discussed later to be put in a bank account for him in England,” Ragano told the men, according to Shaw.
After nearly an hour, the four men stood up, shook hands and agreed they’d move forward with Riggs’ proposal, Shaw says.via Instapundit.
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