Trinidad Wins on Knockout

Undefeated Felix Trinidad stopped Colombia’s Hugo Pineda in the fourth round at San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Saturday to retain his International Boxing Federation welterweight crown.

Trinidad, who raised his record to 35-0 with 30 knockouts, won the chance to fight World Boxing Council welterweight champion Oscar De La Hoya in a welterweight unification bout in Las Vegas on Sept. 18.

“This was a way for me to demonstrate to him I’m ready for him on Sept. 18,” Trinidad said of De La Hoya through an interpreter.

Pineda fell to 36-1-1 with 26 knockouts.

On the undercard, Fred Norwood won a split decision over World Boxing Assn. featherweight champion Antonio Cermeno to reclaim the title that was stripped from him in September because he couldn’t make the weight.

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South African Lehlohonolo Ledwaba captured the vacant IBF junior-featherweight title with a convincing victory over John Michael Johnson at Hammanskraal, South Africa. The title was vacated in February by Vuyani Bungu.

Basketball

Lisa Leslie scored 25 points in 20 minutes on 11-for-12 shooting and led the Sparks to a 108-69 WNBA exhibition victory over the Detroit Shock before an announced 3,373 at the Arrowhead Pond.

“That’s the most fun I’ve ever had in this uniform,” Leslie said. “Now we need to maintain this, and I told my teammates we’re going to war this summer.”

The Sparks also were encouraged by the first-game showings of rookie point guard Ukari Figgs (four for six on three-pointers) and former ABL standout DeLisha Milton, who scored 14.

Miscellany

Patrick Gottesleben and Roman Kukal of USC were able to get through one match of the NCAA men’s tennis doubles championships at Athens, Ga., but two proved too much.

Gottesleben and Kukal defeated Kelly Gullett and John Hui of Pepperdine, 6-4, 4-6, 7-5, in the quarterfinals before losing to Nenad Toroman and Gareth Williams of Tulsa, 6-2, 6-3, in the semifinals. Toroman and Williams will play K.J. Hippensteel and Ryan Wolters of Stanford in today’s final.

In singles, top-seeded James Blake of Harvard and second-seeded Jeff Morrison of Florida advanced to set up the first final between the top two seeded players since the current format was adopted in 1977. Blake rallied to defeat Wolters, 2-6, 6-1, 6-1, and Morrison defeated Washington’s Eric Drew, 6-2, 6-3.

Glasgow Rangers defeated Old Firm rivals Celtic, 1-0, at Glasgow on Rod Wallace’s second-half goal to add the Scottish Cup to this season’s league and League Cup soccer titles.

Eighth-seeded Syracuse continued its surprising run in the NCAA Division I lacrosse tournament, advancing to the championship game for the 10th time by rallying to upset Georgetown, 13-9, at College Park, Md. Syracuse will face third-seeded Virginia, which coasted to a 16-11 victory over John Hopkins.

The U.S. women’s water polo team lost a chance to qualify for the 2000 Olympics with a 6-4 loss to Canada in the World Cup at Winnipeg. The U.S. will get another opportunity for one of the final three spots in the six-team field at another qualifying tournament next spring in Italy.