Serena Williams' husband shared emotional tribute to wife before dramatic competition

Alexis Ohanian is a proud dad and loving husband. He let that be known in a tribute tweet posted just a day before his champion wife was set to play a major final last Saturday.

Ohanian, 35, posted the video on Friday, September 7. His followers retweeted it almost 60,000 times and it received almost 200,000 likes.

The video features the 33-year-old tennis superstar Serena Williams as she stands on a major US Open court and does an interview about her return to the tennis arena.

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Ohanian captioned the tweet:

"She fought for her life, for our child, for recognition, for equal pay, for women’s rights. She never gives up."

The video also shows a collection of videos including hospital footage last year as Williams struggled to recover after childbirth.

The couple's daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr, is almost a year old now and is regularly seen on the tennis legend's Instagram feed.

But neither the Reddit co-founder, nor anyone else, could have known what was to come in Serena's controversial match the very next day.

She was set to play Naomi Osaka, a 20-year-old Haitian Japanese who had already beaten her idol once.

Until then, both women dominated the 2018 US Open Tournament that took place in Flushing Meadows, New York.

Williams beat Latvia's Anastasija Sevastova in the semifinals to claim her spot on Saturday. It was after that match that her husband posted the heartwarming video.

His caption under the video montage continued:

"I had this made for @serenawilliams last night after her match with some home videos from 1 year ago this week. Help me make sure she sees it!"

Fighting for her daughter was one of the points Serena mentioned the very next day during her highly controversial match with Osaka.

The 23-time champion received three penalties that cost her an entire game during the finals match.

Initially, she felt accused of cheating when her coach showed some questionable signs which the umpire deemed as active coaching.

But Serena claimed:

"I don't cheat to win, I'd rather lose. I'm just letting you know."

Following that, she received a racquet abuse violation when she smashed her tennis racquet. When she went after the umpire again, things took an even worse turn.

She called him a "thief" for stealing a point from her in the first violation. This caused her to lose another point and thus a game. Williams considered this extremely unfair to her.

Serena eventually was shorted $17,000 in her runner-up earnings to pay for the fines she received after her shocking outbursts.

Meanwhile, the tennis world has been left in disarray as many persons call for a review of certain rules and grey areas in the handbook.