Tennis icon Boris Becker is about to make a public comeback – not on the tennis court, but on TV.
The German is said to have been offered to be part of the Netflix series “Bear Hunt” – a reality series that the streaming giant is betting heavily on.
– He is a sensational signing for the programme, says a source to the tabloid newspaper The Sun.
At his height, Becker was one of the world’s most high-profile tennis players, but after his career ended, his life has been characterized more by “girls, wine and song” than ups and downs. In recent years, he has, among other things, been in prison for financial offences. He was released in 2022.
By then he had served just under a third of the sentence, which was initially two and a half years behind bars.
Going out into the jungle
After his release, Becker was deported from Britain back home to Germany and banned from entering the country for the next ten years.
Now the 56-year-old is said to have agreed to Netflix. In the series “Bear Hunt”, we get to follow a group of celebrities who try to survive in the jungle in Costa Rica. The program is led by TV personality Bear Grylls and British TV star Holly Willoughby.
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According to The Sun, Becker, who went into personal bankruptcy back in 2017, will earn very good money from the performance.
Other celebrities who have reportedly accepted the program are Spice Girls profile Mel B and rugby player Danny Cipriani.
Boris Becker broke through as a tennis player already at the age of 17 and won a total of six Grand Slam titles and 49 singles titles in total.
He became in many ways a rock star in the sport of tennis in the 1980s and 1990s and the attention around him was enormous.
The German has said, in a documentary, that he has probably squandered more than one billion kroner during his life.
– I won my first million when I was 17. I didn’t understand the value of the money and it disappeared into the sea. At that age, I did not understand that 99 percent of the world’s population never comes close to such sums, the German says in the documentary.
Expert: – Fearless and atypical
Eurosport expert Christer Francke has previously told Nettavisen that he was a “strong personality” during his glory days.
– He was outspoken, fearless and a bit untypically German on the pitch. It was a big personality, Francke said.
– I would say he is among the ten best male tennis players in history. Behind Federer, Nadal and Djokovic, you might have Pete Sampras and Björn Borg. I would say Becker is behind them in a group with people like Stefan Edberg and Mats Wilander.
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The style that the now 55-year-old profile introduced was not commonplace in the sport at the time – and neither is it today.
– He was perhaps one of the greatest athletes at the time. Both in Germany and overall. He and Steffi Graf put German tennis on the map. There was a huge boom in Germany for tennis during that time, Francke said.
– He played real power tennis, threw himself around and hit hard. It was an extreme power tennis. I have played ten years in Germany myself and all Germans serve rock hard because of Becker. He was a pioneer both technically and tactically.
– Not many people were doing it. He pitched and rolled around. No one had done it before, but he did it in every game. He had scrapes on his arms and knees. That style is a bit lost again today, Francke said of Becker.
