Women's Tennis Star Naomi Osaka Calls Out ESPN

Originally posted on The Spun | By Daniel Bates | Last updated Jul 7, 2025 12:04 PM ET

Naomi Osaka made a third-round exit at this year's Wimbledon Championships following her loss to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. And after leaving the hallowed UK tennis grounds she made sure to call out ESPN for a "narrative" about her that she feels its been pushing.

The 27-year-old tennis star has made it no secret that front-facing press conferences and interviews have taken a toll on her mentally over the course of her career. And she didn't really have much to say to reporters in the aftermath of her disappointing finish on Friday.

"I'm just going to be a negative human being today," Osaka shared, via espnW. "I'm so sorry, like, I have nothing positive to say about myself which is something I'm working on. I think, yeah, I mean, it was my daughter's birthday, so I was happy about that this week. But other than that, it's just today I'm just constantly replaying the match now."

Naomi Osaka after losing her third round match at Wimbledon. pic.twitter.com/QSlPJSkcXk
— espnW (@espnW) July 4, 2025

After her soundbite went viral, Osaka circled back on social media to take aim at the Worldwide Leader for portraying her as always being "sad" and negative instead of an athlete feeling natural human emotions in the face of defeat.

"Bro why is it every time I do a press conference after a loss the espns and blogs gotta clip it and put it up. Wtf, why don’t they clip my press conferences after I win? Like why push the narrative that I’m always sad?" Osaka wrote.

"Sure I was disappointed a couple hours ago, now I'm motivated to do better. That's human emotions. The way they clip me I feel like I should be fake happy all the time," she added.

It's understandable why Naomi feels the way she does about some of the media outlets that cover her. But at the same time she did share these thoughts in a public forum— leaving them open to amplification.

We'll see what this means for the four-time Grand Slam winner and her availability with the press moving forward. Hopefully it doesn't lead to her shutting reporters out in the future.

This article first appeared on The Spun and was syndicated with permission.

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