What if Billie Jean King wasn’t the first to try her hand at a Battle of the Sexes tennis match? Saturday Night Live answered that question this weekend, presenting an untold story that preceded King’s victory, of tennis player Charna Lee Diamond (Sarah Sherman), who challenged any man that thought he could beat her to a match. The opponent was the “biggest star in men’s tennis, Ronnie Dunster, emphasis on big.” Dunster, played by Jason Momoa, was “300 pounds of pure muscle,” and Diamond was “one of the lowest ranked female players at the time.” And sure enough, on Dunster’s first serve rockets the ball directly through Diamond’s torso, leaving a Death Becomes Her-esque hole in her stomach. “Did I ruin it? Did I ruin it for women?” a hollow Diamond asks, before powering through and triumphantly demanding that Dunster serve again. The second serve promptly decapitates her. We can always count on Sherman to deliver body horror comedy. “I believe Charna Lee Diamond is the reason there hasn’t been a woman president,” Gloria Steinem (Chloe Fineman) says in the documentary.
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