A TikTok video shot by a fan of Serena Williams went viral earlier on Tuesday (September 26), drawing criticism from tennis fans.
In the above video, a man named “@zain_____” Excerpts from Serena Williams’ runner-up speech at Wimbledon 2019 suggest her champion Simona Halep took banned drugs during the SW19 championship match to improve your performance.
“Yeah, she definitely played like crazy today,” Serena Williams said with a laugh during her postgame speech.
While the 23-time Grand Slam winner may have been brief, the tone in which she delivered the line was misinterpreted by fans on TikTok, saying:
“Selena knew something was wrong.”
The backdrop to the offensive TikTok video, which has received more than 600,000 likes since it was posted, comes after Simona Halep was recently fined by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) for two doping violations. A four-year ban from competition.
These recent developments have led many of Williams’ most ardent fans to question whether the Romanian came out clean at Wimbledon 2019.
While the video may have been intended to be satirical, the tennis community on social media was not impressed with its content. One fan first deduced that Serena Williams’ fan base was delusional, then asserted that she had no chance of winning the 2019 Wimbledon final against Halep.
“There’s a lot wrong with this video. RenaArmy kinda reminds me of the fnaf fandom, half of which don’t even directly consume the products they’re fans of, but they still have strong opinions about it. And they need to let go of Wimbledon 19 Serena had a terrible day and she was going to lose no matter what,” they wrote.
Meanwhile, another fan pointed out that the TikTok user made many untrue claims in his post. The user incorrectly claimed that Serena Williams won the 2019 and 2021 Australian Open titles, when in fact it was Naomi Osaka who dominated both events.
“It’s so funny to be able to say so many incorrect things with such confidence (one of which shows a completely contradictory screenshot),” the fan wrote.
Here are more reactions on social media:
Serena Williams is Melbourne’s most successful female player so far in the Open era
While Serena Williams didn’t actually win the 2019 and 2021 Australian Open, the American legend can be proud of the trophies she scooped in Melbourne.
In the Open era, the former world No. 1 is the most successful women’s singles player at the Australian Open. She won seven of her 23 major championships in Australia. In 2003, at the age of 21, she won the Australian Open for the first time in Melbourne, defeating her sister Venus Williams in the three-set final.
Two years later, Williams won again in Melbourne and made tennis history in 2007. In 2006, a serious knee injury limited the American to just four matches and he dropped to No. 81 in the WTA rankings.
However, that didn’t stop her from becoming the first unseeded woman to win a major since Christina O’Neal in 1978. She then added back-to-back Australian Open titles to her trophy cabinet in 2009-10. Two more wins followed in Melbourne in 2015 and 2017.
editor
Sudeshna Banerjee