Filipino star Nonito Donaire reclaimed the WBO super bantamweight world title on Friday with a gutsy unanimous decision over Mexico’s Cesar Juarez in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Donaire was in control early, knocking Juarez down twice with left hooks in the fourth round, but an aggressive Juarez turned the tide in the middle rounds, battering the 33-year-old Donaire, who was clearly slowing by the seventh round under an onslaught that left him with one eye cut and swelling.
Juarez, 24, should have been credited with a knockdown in the 10th, when his left hook sent Donaire down.
Photo: AFP
However, Donaire had enough left to land effectively in the final rounds and won the thriller by scores of 116-110, 116-110 and 117-109.
“Tremendous fight!” Donaire said. “We give him so much respect. We gave it all. I will definitely give him a rematch.”
Juarez, who fell to 17-4 with 13 knockouts, thought the scores should have been closer — but he did not dispute Donaire’s win.
“The judges were not fair,” he said. “It was much closer, like a one or two-point fight. But I do think Donaire won.”
With the win, Donaire improved to 36-3 with 23 knockouts.
A former world champion in five weight divisions, he captured the vacant WBO super bantamweight belt.
It is a title Donaire had held before — losing it by a unanimous decision in 2013 to Guillermo Rigondeaux, who was stripped of the crown for inactivity.
Donaire has now won three fights in a row since his return to 122 pounds in the wake of a sixth-round knockout loss to unbeaten Jamaican Nicholas Walters 14 months ago.
That defeat in Los Angeles saw Donaire lose the WBA featherweight world title.
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