BOXING
Zhang knocks out Joyce
Chinese heavyweight Zhilei “Big Bang” Zhang knocked out Britain’s Joe Joyce in the third round of their rematch at London’s Wembley Arena on Saturday. Forty-year-old Zhang sent his 38-year-old opponent sprawling to the canvas with a huge right hook to his jaw. Joyce got back to his feet and received oxygen after the referee waved off the fight. Zhang, the 2008 Olympic silver medalist who stopped Joyce in six rounds at London’s Copper Box in April last year, is the WBO’s mandatory challenger for Ukraine’s WBO, IBO, IBF and WBA champion Oleksandr Usyk. “Like I said before the fight, it’s going to end sooner than the first one,” Zhang, now with a record of 25 wins with one defeat and one draw, told the crowd through a translator.
SOCCER
Rapinoe retires regret-free
Megan Rapinoe is to bid farewell to international soccer with no regrets about her time on and off the pitch, she told a news conference on Saturday ahead of her last game, a friendly against South Africa yesterday. The striker, who earned recognition not only for being a two-time world champion but also for her activism, gained fame for her advocacy of LGBT+ rights, solidarity with NFL player Colin Kaepernick and famously confronting former US President Donald Trump. “The off-field stuff is what is most meaningful [to me], and I think what I’m most proud of leaving this team and leaving the game,” she said. “Being so vocal about racial justice or gay rights, I feel like the team really stepped into it and took upon itself to be so much more of what we were on the field and really focus on that.”
TENNIS
Sakkari’s title wait over
Second-seeded Maria Sakkari on Saturday ended her four-year wait for a second WTA title, beating Caroline Dolehide 7-5, 6-3 to win the 1000 level Guadalajara Open. Greece’s Sakkari, ranked ninth in the world, had come up empty in six finals since her breakthrough victory in Rabat in 2019. That included the Guadalajara final last year, when she lost to the US’ Jessica Pegula, and a loss to Coco Gauff in the final at Washington this year. An emotional Sakkari thanked her coach of five years. “We’ve heard so many bad things — that I will never win a title, that I’m a top-five player with only winning one title, that was very hard for me to overcome,” she said. “I’m so happy that I did it here this week.”
SOCCER
Kane beats Bayern record
Harry Kane on Saturday bettered a record first set by legendary German striker Gerd Mueller when he hit a hat-trick in Bayern Munich’s 7-0 rout of VfL Bochum, which took the champions back to the top of the Bundesliga. Kane fired in Bayern’s second just 13 minutes in, before scoring a penalty in the second half. He added a third with two minutes remaining when he tapped in a low cross from Leroy Sane. With six goals in five games, the England captain now has more goals in his first five league matches than any other player in Bayern’s history, beating the mark of Mueller (1965), Miroslav Klose (2007) and Mario Mandzukic (2012), who all scored five times in their first five games for the club. “I’m happy to play my part and I hope there will be many more to come. So far so good,” Kane said.
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
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