Bentt Is Down, Out in London

Herbie Hide (26-0) hurt Michael Bentt with a left hook in the third round and stopped him with 23 seconds left in the seventh round Saturday night in London to win the World Boxing Organization heavyweight title.

Bentt collapsed in his dressing room afterward and was rushed to a nearby hospital, where Jonathan Barnett, a member of his management team, said the fighter was semiconscious and undergoing tests. His condition was stable.

“The doctors took him to the hospital because he didn’t look right and they wanted to take all precautions,” promoter Bob Arum said.

A devout Muslim, Bentt (11-2) had dizzy spells last month while fasting during the religion’s holy month of Ramadan. He gave up the fasting and resumed training.

Baseball

A police officer who found former major league pitcher Eric Show, who died Wednesday after checking into a drug rehabilitation center, wandering on a downtown San Diego street last July says Show admitted to him that he had “been doing quite a bit of crystal methamphetamine.”

San Diego Police Officer Brian Keaton said in an interview with the Associated Press that Show “was pretty whacked out.”

“I just figured it was mostly because of the drugs,” Keaton said, recalling the night of July 17, 1993.

A San Diego Police report detailed how officers found him wandering in a gritty neighborhood, “acting paranoid, stating that people were out to kill him and that he wanted us to shoot him.”

They had to spray him in the face with pepper gas to control him.

An autopsy has been unable to pinpoint the cause of death and more tests are being done.

Show was buried in a private service Saturday in Riverside, his hometown.

Speedskating

Dan Jansen won a 1,000-meter race and the World Cup 1,000-meter title in the finals at Heerenveen, Netherlands, where Bonnie Blair won at 500 and 1,000 meters, taking the World Cup at the longer event.

Jansen and Blair both won gold medals for the United States at the Lillehammer Olympic Games.

Jansen finished second in the 500 meters, behind Manabu Horii of Japan, who won in 36.48 seconds, but Jansen leads the season standings in the event going into today’s season-ending race.

Monique Garbrecht of Germany was second to Blair in both the 1,000 and 500 meters and in the season standings.

Basketball

Coach Russ Bergman has been fired as coach at Coastal Carolina after 19 years amid allegations that he and his staff violated several NCAA rules.

Last month, the school forfeited its first 14 Big South Conference games and pulled out of the postseason tournament after forward Mohammed Acha was declared ineligible. Bergman has said he bought plane tickets for Acha and another player, Dennis Pierre, so they could go home during school vacations.

Auto Racing

A Nissan 300ZX, with drivers Steve Millen, Johnny O’Connell and John Morton, forged into the lead with less than four hours remaining in the Contac 12 Hours of Sebring sports car endurance race in Florida.

Other top contenders fell by the wayside, with the pole-winning Oldsmobile Spice of Jeremy Dale, Bob Schader and Ruggero Melgrati going out with a blown engine during the fourth hour.

At the halfway mark, a Chevrolet Spice with Derek Bell, Andy Wallace and James Weaver was swapping the lead with the Nissan each time the cars would pit.

The two remained on the same lap until the Spice, a World Sports Car-division entry, pitted to replace a rear brake caliper early in the ninth hour. Millen passed the Spice on pit road, then got about another half a lap ahead on the 3.7-mile, 17-turn circuit before Weaver got the Spice back onto the track.

David Green drove his Chevrolet to a speed of 92.447 m.p.h. over the 0.526-mile Martinsville Speedway in Virginia to win the pole for today’s NASCAR Busch Grand National Series portion of the Miller Genuine Draft 500.

Cory McClenathan was the leading top fuel qualifier, Kenji Okazaki first in funny cars and Warren Johnson the leader in pro stock for today’s finals of the National Hot Rod Assn. Gatornationals at Gainesville, Fla.