Tennis

Rafael Nadal Lands in Hot Waters Again After Old ‘Women in Fashion Industry’ Interview Goes Viral

Tanmay Roy
|Published Feb 18, 2024 11:00AM UTC

A few days have passed since Rafael Nadal’s interview with La Sexta. Yet, the dust is still settling on the several revelations he made. One big talking point of the interview is name-dropping Serena Williams.

Rafael Nadal went viral a long time ago after commenting about women getting paid more in the fashion industry in comparison to men. That was in response to a pointed question of ‘Equal Pay’ or ‘Gender Pay Gap’. He took a firm stand for equal pay between men and women this time.

In the most recent interview, Rafael Nadal said that women and men should get equal pay. In fact, he took it a step further and explained that if a woman generates more revenue than a man, then she should even get more pay. This is where Serena Williams got a mention. In other words, if Serena Williams drives more people to the stadium, then her payment should be more. If that’s more then so be it. That will be fair.

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Rafael Nadal also believes that he has always believed and supported that in sports. The Serena Williams net worth is $300 million, which includes approximately $95 million in tennis prize money. She is richer than her sister Venus Williams and also richer than Maria Sharapova.

Despite this noble point of view of Rafael Nadal, fans are quick to point out that he didn’t quite show his support the last time an interviewer posed him with a gender pay gap question.

“What is your opinion on women earning less than men in tennis and what do you think is this based on?” asked a reporter to Nadal.

“Well, I don’t know. I don’t know what it is based on in soccer or golf or modeling. I do’t know. Why do women earn more than men in the fashion industry? Well, I don’t know. But then again, we don’t talk all day long about salary difference,” answered Rafael Nadal to the reporter.

Rafael Nadal was making the argument that different industries treat different people, based on their gender, differently in terms of salary. He had no idea why that was. A lot of tennis fans didn’t spare him much though for his comment and reminded him of it after his recent interview is going viral.

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About the author

Tanmay Roy

Tanmay Roy is a Cricket Journalist at The SportsRush, whose lifelong passion and zeal for the Gentleman's Game landed him this position. A writer with 787 articles under him, Tanmay started out as a fast bowler himself, who played and captained his school cricket team, Tanmay followed the likes of Alan Donald, Kapil Dev, Dale Steyn, Shoaib Akhtar, etc. which peaked his interest in the sport at an early age. Tanmay later on took to batting, although he enjoys hitting in the slog overs as a lower order the most. An ardent fan and follower of cricket since Sourav Ganguly aka Dada waved his shirt off at Lord's balcony, Tanmay's 20+ years of devotion towards cricket brings him the joy and satisfaction required from a job as he pens down articles based on factual knowledge, analysis and his own perspective. Of late, a huge fan of Jasprit Bumrah, Shaheen Shah Afridi and Mohammed Shami, Tanmay enjoys to watch fast bowling more than anything. Among other athletes, he is a huge fan of Lionel Messi, Roger Federer, PV Sindhu.