World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin confirmed his status as the most devastating finisher in boxing in Los Angeles on Saturday night, demolishing US challenger Dominic Wade inside two rounds to score his 22nd consecutive knockout.
The 34-year-old Kazakh star, one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the world, delighted a packed house of 16,353 fans at Los Angeles’s famous Forum sports arena with an explosive performance to overwhelm Wade.
The Los Angeles-based Golovkin is aiming to become the biggest draw in boxing following the retirements in the past year of Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao — and Saturday’s spectacular win only enhances his box-office appeal.
Photo: AFP
Golovkin is hoping to secure a superfight against Mexican middleweight champion, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, who fights Britain’s Amir Khan in Las Vegas next month.
GONZALEZ V ARROYO
AFP, LOS ANGELES
Roman Gonzalez of Nicaragua enhanced his reputation as one of the world’s best fighters in Los Angeles on Saturday after easily defeating Puerto Rico’s McWilliams Arroyo to retain his WBC flyweight crown.
The 28-year-old champion improved his record to 45-0 (38 knockouts) to claim a unanimous decision over the game, but outclassed Arroyo in a bruising 12-round contest at the Forum sports arena.
Two judges scored it 119-109 in Gonzalez’s favor, with the third card marked at 120-108.
It was Gonzalez’s fourth defense of the title he won after beating Japan’s Akira Yaegashi in Tokyo two years ago.
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