BOXING
Parker to face Ruiz for title
New Zealand’s Joseph Parker is to fight Mexican-American Andy Ruiz in Auckland, New Zealand, next month for the World Boxing Organization (WBO) heavyweight title vacated by Tyson Fury, Parker’s promoter said yesterday. After weeks of negotiation, Parker’s Duco Events said the fighters would meet at the city’s Vector Arena on Dec. 10. On the line is the WBO heavyweight belt, one of the two titles Fury vacated last month in order to seek medical treatment after admitting he took cocaine to treat depression. Parker, 24, who has a 21-0 record with 18 knockouts, is now the WBO’s top-ranked heavyweight. Ruiz, 27, who is Mexican-born, but based in the US, has a 29-0 record with 19 knockouts.
SOCCER
Dresden fined for bull’s head
German second-division club SG Dynamo Dresden have been fined 60,000 euros (US$66,279) and will have parts of their tribune shut out for spectators for one game following violent behavior by their fans that included throwing a severed bull’s head into the stadium area. The German Football Association yesterday said that repeat offenders Dynamo, who were already on probation from incidents last season, had failed to safeguard their high-risk DFB-Pokal game in August against RB Leipzig, nicknamed the Bulls. Dresden fans had thrown a bull’s head onto the inside area of the stadium, unfurled insulting banners and hit one player with a coin during their win over Leipzig, owned by energy drinks maker Red Bull.
SOCCER
Osasuna fire coach Monreal
Relegation-threatened La Liga side CA Osasuna on Monday fired coach Enrique Martin Monreal after just one win in 11 games on their return to the Spanish top flight. “The club has taken the decision to relieve coach Enrique Martin Monreal of his duties,” Osasuna said in a statement. “After analyzing the sporting situation of the team, it was determined there was a need to take this decision with the objective of turning around the current run.” Monreal played for Osasuna for more than a decade in the 1970s and 1980s before leading the club to promotion via the playoffs from the Segunda Division last season. However, Saturday’s 1-0 defeat at home to Deportivo Alaves left the Navarran side second to bottom of the league and three points adrift of safety.
TENNIS
Nadal to play in Abu Dhabi
Rafael Nadal is to return from a wrist injury to play an exhibition match late next month in the United Arab Emirates. The 14-time Grand Slam champion on Monday said on Facebook that he would compete in the six-player, US$250,000 Mubadala World Tennis Championship. The event is not connected to the ATP Tour and is to be held in Abu Dhabi on Dec. 29-31. Top-ranked Andy Murray is also scheduled to play, as is fourth-ranked Milos Raonic. Nadal beat Raonic in the previous final. Last month, Nadal said he was cutting short his season to fully recover from an injured left wrist that sidelined him for more than two months this season. The 30-year-old Spaniard recently missed a tournament in Basel, Switzerland, and last week’s BNP Paribas Masters.
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