Nonito Donaire became the new world featherweight champion on Saturday after defeating South Africa’s Simpiwe Vetyeka in Macau in a fight that saw the Philippine boxing star take victory after an anti-climactic technical decision.
The bout was stopped after four rounds due to an “accidental headbutt” that left 31-year-old Donaire’s left eye swollen and cut. According to the rules of the WBA, if such a stoppage happens after four rounds, the match goes to the scorecards.
A trio of judges scored 49-46 for Donaire.
The fight had started off slow, but Donaire floored his opponent in the second round with a right hook. Another left hook connected in the fourth round, knocking Vetyeka down again and sending the crowd wild.
However, Donaire said that he was disappointed about the way the fight ended.
“It’s disappointing that things ended the way it did and hopefully we can do it again, “ he said at a press conference after the match.
“When I got headbutted I was really out of it, I didn’t know what the hell was going on,” he said.
“There was nothing else that I could do, I was at the biggest disadvantage,” he said, adding that blood and medicine kept getting into his eye. “I wanted to keep going, but my dad kept saying: You’re at a disadvantage, you’re bleeding like crazy.”
“The Filipino Flash” improved his record to 33-2 with 21 knockouts a match after he bounced back from a loss to Cuban Guillermo Rigondeaux in April last year. He knocked out Armenian southpaw Vic Darchinyan in November last year.
He was working with his once-estranged father, Nonito Snr, who was head trainer for the fight. Vetyeka fell to 26-3 with 16 knockouts.
“I’m so disappointed about how the fight ended, and I don’t know what to say, I am just disappointed,” Vetyeka said.
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
An amateur soccer league organized by farmers, students and factory workers in rural China has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own, raising hopes China can grow talent from the ground up and finally become a global force. The nation of 1.4 billion people has about 200 million soccer fans, more than any other country, but it has failed to build world-class teams, partly due to a top-down approach where clubs pick players from a very small pool of prescreened candidates. The professional game is marred by a history of fixed matches, corruption, and dismal performances,
RSS