Ben Rothenberg, a well-known tennis writer who travels all over the world covering the sport for The New York Times and elsewhere, has thousands of avid followers. One, however, might be a little more devoted than others. Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios, the king of trash talk, tweeners, and tanking—but mostly trash talk—has a history of heckling Rothenberg on Twitter, and on Wednesday, their long-simmering beef got hot.
It all started when Rothenberg tweeted out his profile of 20-year-old Greek tennis player and YouTuber Stefanos Tsitisipas, along with a clip of one of Tsitisipas’s YouTube videos.
Kyrgios responded with this meme:
(Last week, he posted and then deleted this tweet mocking Tsitsipas, so it’s safe to say the meme was another jab at the 20-year-old Greek.)
And then it went from there:
Last June, the two butted heads as well, after Kyrgios started responding to Rothenberg’s tweets:
Later that month:
Kyrgios kept it up into the fall:
And way back in March 2016, Kyrgios was upset that Rothenberg wrote an article saying that Australian Davis Cup team caption Lleyton Hewitt shouldn’t pick himself to play singles on the last day of play:
Kyrgios still follows Rothenberg on Twitter. For his part, Rothenberg says, “The cupcakes offer will never expire.”