Terence Crawford retained his WBO lightweight title and kept his undefeated record intact with a unanimous decision over No. 1 contender Ray Beltran on Saturday.
The 27-year-old Crawford dominated the 12-round fight, switching to a southpaw stance at times to land shots and making Mexico’s Beltran miss before counterpunching effectively.
In the final round, Crawford (25-0, 17 KOs) was going for the knockout, but Beltran managed to hang on and even landed a few left hooks of his own to keep Crawford at bay.
“I felt he was slowing down,” said Crawford, who was fighting in front of a hometown crowd at the CenturyLink Center arena in Omaha, Nebraska.
“I didn’t want to get careless. I just stuck with what was working. I saw his eyes [were] swollen, but I just stuck to the game plan,” the American added.
Crawford, who came into the ring almost 20 pounds heavier than at the weigh-in, wants to move on from the 135-pound division to 140 pounds.
“This is it for [the lightweight division],” Crawford said. “I [have] been at 135 since I was 17. I am 27 now. It is time to move up.”
Crawford landed 243 punches compared with just 96 for Beltran and also had a big lead in total punches thrown, with 436 to his rival’s 162.
Despite all the punishment he was taking, Beltran (29-7-1, 17 KOs) continued to plow forward and even had enough left in the tank to make it an entertaining 12th round.
“I prayed to God to give me the strength, but I forgot to pray to take it away from him,” Beltran said.
In the featherweight fight on the undercard, Russia’s Evgeny Gradovich kept his world title after fighting Jayson Velez to a draw.
The three judges were deadlocked, with one having Gradovich the winner 117-111 and, with Gradovich moving to 19-0-1, nine KOs and Velez on 22-0-1, 16 KOs.
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