Moorer Stops Jirov on TKO

Through eight rounds of Thursday night’s 12-round main event at the Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula, heavyweight Vassiliy Jirov was in much better shape than he looked against Michael Moorer.

Although he had blood seeping through his hair from a cut on top of his head, and additional blood dripping from a cut around his right eye -- both injuries caused by head butts -- Jirov was comfortably ahead on all three judges’ scorecards.

But all that changed with a short chopping left by Moorer in the ninth round that sent Jirov, a former International Boxing Federation cruiserweight champion, crashing to the canvas.

Jirov bounced up at the count of five, but, when he couldn’t regain his equilibrium, referee Pat Russell stopped the bout at the 2:08 mark of the round, giving Moorer (47-4-1, 37 knockouts) a TKO victory.

Despite the fact Russell deducted a point from Jirov in the eighth round for head butting, judge Lou Filippo had Jirov (33-3, 29) ahead through eight rounds, 79-71. Fellow judges Lou Moret (78-72), and Raul Caiz (77-73) had it slightly closer.

“It doesn’t matter now,” said Moorer, a former heavyweight champion trying to resurrect his career at 36.

Moorer took a knee in the third round after banging heads for the first time with Jirov, but Russell ruled it a knockdown.

*

Promoter Don King filed suit in federal court against middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins and his new promoter-partner Golden Boy Promotions. King is claiming he is still contractually tied to Hopkins.

Golden Boy Promotions, headed by Oscar De La Hoya, immediately asked the court for a declaratory judgment.

-- Steve Springer

Miscellany

Lamar Hunt, owner of Major League Soccer’s Kansas City Wizards, plans to sell the team and is looking for a local buyer who will build a soccer-specific stadium for the club.

Hunt said he decided to sell the team after voters defeated a tax plan in November that would have funded improvements at Arrowhead Stadium. The Wizards share the stadium with the NFL’s Chiefs.

Hunt, who owns the Chiefs through his Hunt Sports Group, said the failed tax measure forced him to refocus his spending on the Chiefs and Arrowhead, which the team says needs millions of dollars in improvements.

If no buyer comes forward, the Hunt Sports Group will continue to operate the Wizards through the 2005 season, he said.

Kris Draper of the Detroit Red Wings and Sergei Fedorov of the Ducks scored 29 seconds apart and a team of locked-out NHL stars defeated a Latvian club, 4-2, to open their European tour at Riga, Latvia.

Martin Brodeur of the New Jersey Devils and Dominik Hasek of the Ottawa Senators shared goaltending duties for the NHL stars, who also will take their seven-country tour to Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia; Bratislava, Slovakia; Bern, Switzerland; Karlstad, Jonkoping and Linkoping, Sweden; Oslo, Norway, and Katowice, Poland.

Former Pro Bowl receiver Andre Rison was jailed in DeKalb County, Ga., for failure to pay child support.

Rison, 37, who spent 12 seasons with Indianapolis, Atlanta, Cleveland, Jacksonville, Green Bay, Kansas City and Oakland, was sentenced to jail until he pays $127,000 to a woman with whom he has two sons.

Rison last played in the NFL in 2000 with Oakland.

Ratko Rudic, the men’s water polo coach who led the U.S. to a seventh-place finish in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, resigned to take over as coach of the national team in his home country of Croatia.

The resignation of Rudic, a native of Split, Croatia, is effective immediately and leaves the U.S. without a coach only five months after he signed a new four-year contract with USA Water Polo and only four months after he headed the U.S. team in the Olympics.

Although there is a clause in Rudic’s contract preventing him from leaving in the middle of a four-year contractual and Olympic cycle, USA Water Polo officials say they will not enforce it.

Kelly Dostal of Wake Forest and Kim Smith of Providence are the Collegiate Women Sports Awards winners for field hockey and cross-country, respectively. Both are automatically nominated for the Honda-Broderick Cup, given to the female collegiate athlete of the year in June.

Americans Jill Bakken and Amanda Moreley won the America’s Cup bobsled race at Park City, Utah, edging a Canadian team by just over one second.

Bakken and Moreley finished on the Utah Olympic Park track with a time of 1 minute 47.2 seconds in USA I.

Canada I’s Suzanne Gavine-Hlady and Cindy Marshall were second at 1:48.3, and Sara Sprung and Ingrid Marcum finished third at 1:48.5 in USA II.

U.S. marathon runner Eddy Hellebuyck, 43, was suspended for two years after testing positive for a synthetic hormone, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency said.

Hellebuyck tested positive for EPO, or erythropoietin, which stimulates the production of oxygen-rich red blood cells and is a drug of choice in endurance sports.