Norris Wastes Little Time Defending Titles

Terry Norris stopped Nicaragua’s Jorge Luis Vado at 42 seconds of the second round to retain his World Boxing Council and International Boxing Federation junior middleweight titles Saturday night in Phoenix.

Earlier, Venezuela’s Eloy Rojas remained World Boxing Assn. featherweight champion with a unanimous but unpopular 12-round decision over Miguel Arrozal of the Philippines, and Bernard Hopkins stopped Steve Frank in the first round to retain his IBF middleweight title.

Norris, of Campo, Calif., was fighting for the first time since winning the IBF title Dec. 16. It was his 10th defense of the WBC belt he won in 1990.

He caught Vado with a right hand to the jaw and then floored him with a looping right to the forehead early in the second round.

Vado struggled to his feet at the count of 10 but was wobbly, and referee Roger Yanez stopped the scheduled 12-round fight.

“I wish it lasted a little longer. I wanted to show him a boxing lesson,” said Norris, who is 42-6 with 26 KOs after a $200,000 payday. “I’ll be fighting again in February or March. I want all the titles.”

It was Vado’s first loss in 15 pro fights.

Rojas (33-1-1) came on strong in the final two rounds, closing Arrozal’s left eye and opening a cut under the right one. It was his seventh title defense since becoming WBA champion in 1991. Arrozal (24-6), the WBA’s No. 1 contender, appeared to carry the fight until tiring in the later rounds. The decision was booed by the small crowd.

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Mark Breland, a former two-time WBA welterweight champion who had been idle since retiring in November 1992, started a comeback by stopping Ricardo Smith of Syracuse, N.Y., 30 seconds into the third round of a scheduled 10-round junior-middleweight bout in New York.

Breland (31-3-1), 32, who admitted retiring because the desire to fight had left him, used a right uppercut to send Smith (7-11-1) down.

Winter Sports

Irina Slutskaya gained the first title for a Russian or former Soviet woman’s singles skater as she ended Surya Bonaly’s bid for a record-equaling sixth consecutive crown at the European Figure Skating Championships at Sofia, Bulgaria.

Slutskaya, 16, and last year’s world junior champion, had an outstanding routine to a medley of American music while easily landing six triple jumps, including two in combination.

“Of course, I was nervous but I pulled myself together and I just thought about skating well,” Slutskaya said.

Slutskaya got scores of 5.7 to 5.9 on both technical merit and artistic impression and firsts from all nine judges in the final free skating, worth two-thirds of the total score.

Maria Butyrskaya of Russia, who fell on one jump and scaled down two others, finished third.

Mario Reiter used an acrobatic second run for a combined time of 1 minute 58.79 seconds in his first World Cup slalom victory in leading a 1-2-3 Austrian sweep at Sestriere, Italy. Thomas Sykora finished second and Thomas Stangassinger was third. World Cup leader Alberto Tomba skidded out in the first run, failing in an attempt for his seventh victory on his favorite “home” track.

A women’s World Cup downhill was canceled after American Picabo Street apparently led a strong protest by the leading skiers about the setting and safety of the course at Sestriere.

Canada’s Stephane Rochon received 26.20 points and won his second consecutive World Cup moguls event at Mont Tremblant, Canada. Minna Karhu (24.63 points) of Finland collected her first victory in the women’s contest.

American snowboarders continued their strong run in the inaugural world championships at Lienz, Austria, collecting gold and silver as Jeff Greenwood of Granby, Conn., overtook teammate Mike Jacoby of Hood River, Ore., with a time of 1 minute 50.18 seconds for the first giant slalom title.

Noake Hiroyuki of Japan won the men’s 1,500-meter speedskating World Cup at Baselga Di Pine, Italy, in 1 minute 56.22 seconds. K.C. Boutiette of Tacoma, Wash., who had never finished higher than ninth, was third.

Baseball

Free agent Vince Coleman agreed to a minor league contract with the Cincinnati Reds, who are looking for a leadoff hitter. Coleman, 34, faces competition from several others, including Brian Hunter, Eric Anthony and Eric Davis. Coleman split last season between Kansas City and Seattle, batting .288 with five homers, 29 RBIs and 42 steals in 58 attempts.

Track & Field

Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia broke the men’s world indoor 5,000-meter record with a time of 13 minutes 10.98 seconds, at the Sindelfingen indoor meet in Germany. Gebrselassie’s time was nearly 9 1/2 seconds faster than the mark of 13:20.4 set by Suleiman Nyambui of Tanzania on Feb. 6, 1981.

A Super Bowl Sunday tradition continues today with the 18th running of the Redondo 10K, but this year there is a little embellishment.

Several runners with Olympic credentials, including marathoners Linda Somers and Bob Kempainen, will participate as part of their training for qualification races for the Olympic Games.

For Somers, who has won the last two Redondo runs and who was the first American woman to finish in the 1995 Boston Marathon and 1995 World Track and Field marathon in Sweden; and Kempainen, the American marathon record-holder (2 hours 8 minutes 47 seconds in Boston in 1994), today’s race will be their final tuneups before the U.S. Olympic marathon trials, on Feb. 10 in Columbia, S.C., for the women and Feb. 17 in Charlotte, N.C., for the men.

Swimming

Sophomore Emily Short won both breaststroke events to lead the seventh-ranked USC women’s team to an upset 153-147 victory over top-ranked Stanford at USC. Short won the 100-meter race in 1 minute 12.03 seconds and the 200 in 2:33:56.