Amir Khan defeated Dmitriy Salita in just 76 seconds to retain his World Boxing Association (WBA) light-welterweight title here at the Metro Radio Arena on Saturday.
The 22-year-old Briton ended the unbeaten record of New Yorker Salita after flooring the challenger twice before finishing the fight with a left hook to the chin to complete a speedy first title defense.
WBA champion Khan has declared he wants to fight in the US next year and the victory once again showed how the 2004 Athens Olympic silver medalist is improving since losing his unbeaten record last year.
Salita, who was born in Ukraine but moved to New York as a child, claimed he would expose Khan’s punch resistance, but there was no repeat of the bout in September last year when the Briton was blown away in just 54 seconds by Colombian Breidis Prescott.
Instead, it was Salita who was overwhelmed in the first round. Salita looked mesmerized as Khan launched his ferocious assault and the New Yorker was first dumped on the canvas by a left-right combination.
After taking a standing count of eight, Salita continued but moments later was in more trouble as Khan unloaded a blizzard of punches with the challenger trapped in the corner.
Salita was given another standing count before Khan finished the bout with a sweet left hook that prompted Puerto Rican referee Luis Pavon to step in.
■WILLIAMS V MARTINEZ
AP, ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY
Paul Williams showed why he’s one of the most respected fighters in the world with a contentious majority decision over Argentina’s Sergio Martinez in a non-title middleweight bout on Saturday.
Pierre Benoist, scored the fight a whopping 119-110 in favor of the American, while Lynne Carter had it 115-113 for Williams. Julie Lederman scored the bout 114-114.
“Either he’s incompetent — or worse, because there is no explanation for that score,” Martinez’s promoter, Lou DiBella, said of Benoist.
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