RUGBY UNION
Mo’unga focused on Japan
New Zealand playmaker Richie Mo’unga yesterday said that he can imagine playing in Japan “until I retire” and is not thinking about a return to the All Blacks. Mo’unga has moved to Toshiba Brave Lupus on a three-year deal, meaning he cannot play for the All Blacks during that time unless eligibility rules change to allow overseas-based players. The 29-year-old said he was “fully involved” in his move to Toshiba. “I’m focused on the present, I just want to give all I can to Toshiba,” the flyhalf told reporters. “I really can see myself playing here as long as I can until I retire.” Mo’unga is one of several All Blacks moving to Japan, including captain Sam Cane and World Rugby player of the year Ardie Savea. Flanker Shannon Frizell has also joined Mo’unga at Tokyo-based Toshiba.
CRICKET
Attendance record set
The Cricket World Cup attracted a tournament-record 1.25 million spectators during the six-and-a-half-week event that ended on Sunday with Australia beating India by six wickets for their sixth title. The International Cricket Council yesterday said that the tournament had 1,250,307 spectators. With six games to go, the spectator figures had already surpassed 1 million. The India attendance figures surpass the earlier marks of the 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, which attracted 1,016,420 spectators, and the 2019 edition in England and Wales, which had 752,000 fans. There were 48 matches played in India for an average attendance of about 26,000.
MIXED MARTIAL ARTS
PFL buys Bellator
The Professional Fighters League (PFL) has bought rival Bellator MMA, in a bid to take on the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Backed by Saudi Arabia’s giant new sports fund, Washington-based PFL held its first event in 2018, making it a relatively new combat sports upstart. Its champions in each weight class earn US$1 million in prize money. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed in a statement on Monday. Bellator is owned by Paramount Global. The PFL first put forward a potential deal in January, PFL’s founder and chairman Donn Davis said in an interview. Paramount has been looking to cut costs by selling off or shutting down a number of properties. Showtime Sports, one of the biggest boxing broadcasters of the past 40 years, is set to end at the end of the year. Saudi Arabia’s SRJ Sports Investments took a minority stake in the PFL in August. SRJ is a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the organization that owns LIV Golf. PFL chief executive officer Peter Murray has signaled an interest in potentially collaborating with the UFC. “When the very best champions of PFL plays against the very best champions of UFC, those are fights the fans want to see,” Murray said in an interview. “We are certainly interested in it, but it takes two parties to bring that together.” After UFC 295, UFC CEO and president Dana White said he was not interested in a tie-up. PFL’s upcoming championship is to be held in Washington tomorrow, with heavyweight fighters including Kayla Harrison, Bubba Jenkins and Chris Wade to compete. The organization is also in talks to stage the next championship in Saudi Arabia in November next year, Murray 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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