■ Boxing
Tarver, Johnson date set
Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson will relinquish their light heavyweight titles to fight each other in a matchup of top light heavyweights. Tarver and Johnson will meet Dec. 18 in a 12-round bout at Staples Center without any light heavyweight crowns on the line. The WBC stripped Tarver of his championship belt for not agreeing to fight mandatory challenger Paul Briggs of Australia. Jamaican-born Johnson decided to relinquish the IBF version rather than fight that organization's top challenger, Rico Hoye. "It wasn't that they refused to fight their mandatory challengers," promoter Joe DeGuardia said. "It was a matter that they wanted to meet each other in order to make the best bout available, the most compelling bout, the bout everybody, including these two fighters want to see." Unfortunately, in order to accomplish all this, they had to relinquish their titles.
■ Football
Fox and CBS keep games
The NFL agreed to contract extensions with Fox and CBS to televise Sunday afternoon games for six more years, deals worth a combined US$8 billion. The current contract, which expires after the 2005 season, was worth US$17.2 billion, including the Sunday night and Monday night packages with ESPN and ABC. The extensions will run through 2011. The league still is in negotiations for the prime-time packages. CBS continues to televise AFC games, a package it acquired in 1998. CBS handled NFL games from 1956 through the 1970 merger, then took over the NFC until 1993, when Fox outbid CBS for that package. CBS then outbid NBC for the AFC games.
■ Golf
Big names sign up
Two of Europe's Ryder Cup stars -- Scotland's Colin Montgomerie and England's Lee Westwood -- will headline January's Caltex Masters golf tournament in Singapore, organizers said. Montgomerie, a seven-time European Order of Merit winner, is the defending champion at the US$1 million tournament. He was also a member of the victorious European team that beat the US by a record margin in the Ryder Cup this year. Among those spearheading the Asian challenge are Thailand's Thongchai Jaidee, the leading money winner on the Asian Tour, and China's Zhang Lian-wei, who won here in 2003 by beating South Africa's Ernie Els, tournament organizers said. Westwood meanwhile, is a frequent visitor to the region with 25 wins worldwide. The tournament is one of the first stops on the 2005 season and is jointly sanctioned by the European and Asian Tours.
■ Basketball
Sorry -- wrong number
Charlotte Bobcats fans were in for a surprise if they dialed an NBA ticket number listed in a local phone book: Instead of getting seats, they were told to call a sex chat line. The correct number -- (800) 4NBA-TIX -- was established by the league three years ago for tickets in any city, and it was listed correctly in the 2002-2003 BellSouth White Pages, back when the city had the Hornets. But the number in this year's BellSouth book, released in September, lists a wrong toll-free number that refers callers to the sex line. BellSouth and Bobcats officials said they learned of the glitch last Thursday. "We certainly apologize to any of our fans who have been inconvenienced by this," said Chris Weiller, a team spokesman.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier