The assumption by some was that Riggs would not have been able to resist the odds on Billie Jean King, who was listed as high as 5–2 in the Las Vegas sports books. Tennis legend Don Budge, who died in 2000, had told one of his sons he had no doubt Riggs threw the match for money. “In no uncertain terms, he definitely heard from people that Riggs had thrown it,” says Budge’s son, Jeffrey. “And it was huge money—more than $100,000, perhaps $200,000 to $500,000. Dad said, ‘[Riggs] could have run her off the court any day of the week as he did against Margaret Court.’”
But Kuhle denies Riggs threw the match, arguing it would have been impossible for Riggs to have quietly placed large bets on King in Vegas. In the 1970s, as they do now, sports books had strict wagering limits and large bets would have moved the odds in an obvious way. “It just makes no sense,” Kuhle says.
If Riggs had thrown the match for the Mafia, how would that kind of fix have benefited Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante Jr.? Both men controlled networks of illegal bookmaking operations. From New Orleans, Carlos Marcello ran “the wire” that took bets on horse races and sports wagering across the country, Mafia experts say. Gambling experts said that “a perfect fix” is a result known to illegal bookmakers. That knowledge allows them to offer fatter odds on a betting favorite knowing it would attract far more action.
London betting shops listed odds on “The Battle of the Sexes,” which had been scheduled to be shown on closed-circuit TV at a half-dozen London movie houses. But the bookmakers viewed the match with “huge suspicion,” recalls Graham Sharpe, a 62-year-old media relations director at William Hill, the UK’s largest bookmaker. “This thing was regarded as a freak show, a sideshow. And we were concerned because one of the guys is a noted hustler and a compulsive gambler, who is not as pure as the driven snow. If anyone tried to bet more than a few pounds, we’d reject the bet and figure he knew something that we didn’t.”
The Mafia expert and author Lamar Waldron was told about Riggs’s Mafia acquaintances and what Hal Shaw had heard. “Given all the connections that Riggs had and the way these Mafia leaders operated, it would be unusual if they didn’t look to him to throw the match,” Waldron says. “Certainly it appears the motive and opportunity was there.”
When Shaw watched Riggs lose to King, he says he knew the scheming he had overheard in Palma Ceia’s pro shop had been executed. “There’s nothing impossible when money’s involved and power’s involved,” he says. Shaw says he is glad he decided to come forward and tell his story and has nothing left to fear. “You can ask me a thousand questions, I would still tell you what happened that night, you know, 40 years ago,” he says. “I got no ax to grind. I don’t get anything for this. I know deep in my heart—Riggsy had taken a fall, but made it look good. He was a showman, and he pulled it off.”
But Lornie Kuhle angrily denied Shaw’s allegations during an interview at his home in Decatur, Illinois. “I’ve never heard anything so far-fetched,” he says. “It’s just complete bulls——.” As for Shaw, he said, “I mean, that’s ridiculous—unless he’s got Alzheimer’s, and people do get that when they’re 79 years old.” He added, “I never heard anything so far-fetched as this guy in Tampa. I’d like to meet that guy sometime.”
Kuhle also vehemently disputed the suggestion that Riggs owed mob-linked bookmakers any money, at any time. “You can say the mob killed John Kennedy,” he says. “We could rationalize that one, but Bobby never owed anybody a dime—football bets, basketball bets, or anything like that . . . There are no mob people involved with this match. The mob doesn’t even play tennis . . . I think that’s a funny story.”
Kuhle, who is the founder and owner of the Bobby Riggs Tennis Center and Museum in Encinitas, California, also denied that Riggs received a Mafia payment deposited in a bank account in England, as Shaw had heard. “Listen, I’m with Bobby night and day for 20 years,” Kuhle says. “I’m the executor of his estate. I know every nickel he had in the bank. I know every check he’s written, every bet he made. There was never any bet with anybody in the mob or anything like that.”
However, Larry Riggs did not dismiss Shaw’s story outright because, after all, his father knew and gambled with a lot of mob guys all over the country. Bobby Riggs was also a longtime member of the La Costa Country Club in Carlsbad, California, a reputed mob-built country club where mob leader and Riggs’s acquaintance Moe Dalitz was a member. And Larry Riggs had never understood why those Chicago pals of hit man Jackie Cerone had visited his father several times prior to the King match.