Male wearing a dated, knotted tie (4,4)
I believe the answer is:
dead heat
'tie' is the definition.
(dead heat is a kind of tie)
'male wearing a dated knotted' is the wordplay.
'male' becomes 'he' (**).
'wearing' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'knotted' indicates an anagram.
'a'+'dated'='adated'
'adated' with letters rearranged gives 'deadat'.
'he' going into 'deadat' is 'DEAD-HEAT'.
(Other definitions for dead heat that I've seen before include "Equality in finish of race" , "Exactly tied race" , "no decisive result" , "Produce tie" , "Closest possible finish" .)