Anna Kournikova has called off her fight against Penthouse, according to a Media Life report Monday.
The tennis star has settled her $10 million claim against the magazine, which published nude photographs of another woman last year and claimed they were of her.
The report said the amount of the settlement was not disclosed. But the timing suggested that the Russian beauty wanted to get what she could while there still are resources within Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione's empire, which is in the middle of its worst cash crunch ever. Media Life reported that the magazine was recently forced to cut its employees? paychecks by 75 percent and skip an issue, and a real estate lender has threatened to foreclose on Guccione?s $37 million mansion.
Guccione pledged to destroy 18,000 remaining copies of the disputed issue last year after reaching a separate settlement with Judith Soltesz-Benetton, the woman whose nude form was falsely attributed to Kournikova.
Soltesz-Benetton, the daughter-in-law of fashion designer Luciano Benetton, had also asked for $10 million in damages. Penthouse, fearing that a judge was about to rule against it, quickly settled with her for what was said to be a far smaller amount, the report said.
