Did Bobby Riggs Throw The Battle of the Sexes tennis match?
(Richard Muscio, CPA, says “Of course not. Follow the money.”)

Don Van Natta, however, says ‘yes’ in this piece he produced for ESPN. The Match Maker, Mr. Van Natta is an investigative reporter that has been on staff with ESPN since January of 2012. Prior to joining ESPN he worked for the New York Times.

Unfortunately, Mr. Van Natta’s logic doesn’t hold water. As a CPA, I follow the money. Mr. Van Natta states in his piece that Bobby Riggs had recently received a $1 million marital settlement payment (non-taxable), which is where the Mr. Van Natta’s logic is lost. Bobby Riggs didn’t need money to pay the Mob. As a teenager I was Bobby’s scrapbooker. As an adult, I became a CPA, and I wound up with over 10 years of Bobby’s tax returns, including the one for 1973. Standards of my profession do not allow me to disclose Bobby’s income. However, I can make one statement that is an inarguable fact: there is one other extremely feared institution that goes by three letters in this country besides the Mob: Namely, the IRS.

Read more about why Bobby Riggs had no financial incentive to throw the match…