BOXING
Taiwan league to hold bouts
Taiwan’s first professional boxing league is to hold matches in Taipei’s Xinyi District on Friday, the Carry Fighting Championship (CFC) announced on Monday. To mark the inaugural season, the league is to stage 10 fights at Legacy Max on the sixth floor of Shin Kong Mitsukoshi’s A11 store, including three exhibition bouts featuring six of its contracted boxers and a single-loss elimination competition featuring eight non-contracted fighters in the 75kg weight class. The 60kg and 67kg weight fights are to be held on Saturday.
CRICKET
Afghan series scrapped
Australia yesterday scrapped a T20 men’s series against Afghanistan later this year, saying the situation for women in the Taliban-ruled country was deteriorating. Cricket Australia said it had received advice “that conditions for women and girls in Afghanistan are getting worse” and so had postponed the three-match series scheduled for August at a neutral venue. It is the third time since 2021 that Australia has refused to play Afghanistan outside of international tournaments.
SOCCER
Fans can get Messi refund
Fans who bought tickets to watch Lionel Messi in Hong Kong, only for him to sit out the friendly, are to receive a 50 percent refund — as long as they do not launch legal action, organizer Tatler Asia said on Monday. A sellout crowd paid from HK$880 (US$112.50) to see the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner play on Feb. 4 in an Inter Miami tour match against a Hong Kong select XI. However, the 36-year-old Argentine remained glued to the bench with an injury, drawing boos from the crowd — and then a furor in China, which saw his absence as a political snub.
ATHLETICS
Olympian opposes tournament
Olympic gold medalist and Australian Sports Commission CEO Kieren Perkins yesterday said that “someone will die” if a multisport event that he called “borderline criminal” and which allows banned performance-enhancing substances goes ahead. The Enhanced Games have been proposed by Australian entrepreneur Aron D’Souza, with Australian world champion swimmer James Magnussen the first athlete to publicly pledge to compete at the event. D’Souza has promised the retired Magnussen US$1 million if he can break the world 50m freestyle record after taking performance-enhancing substances. “Someone will die if we allow that sort of environment to continue to foster and flourish,” Perkins told a news conference, adding that “there’s plenty of historical examples of athletes that don’t survive through their 40s because of taking drugs.”
SOCCER
Acerbi leaves national camp
Italy’s Inter defender Francesco Acerbi has left the national team camp ahead of this month’s friendlies after being accused of using a racist expression by Napoli’s Juan Jesus in a Serie A game, the Italian Football Federation said. The alleged incident occurred during Sunday’s 1-1 draw between Serie A leaders Inter and seventh-placed Napoli, with defender Jesus later saying Acerbi had apologized. The federation said that although it agreed that Acerbi did not have racist intent, it was agreed he should be left out of Friday’s friendlies in the US “to let things settle for the national team.”
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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