Sports Digest: Rioting damage not extensive at College Football Hall of Fame - Lewiston Sun Journal

MIXED MARTIAL ARTS

Jon “Bones” Jones tweeted Sunday that he’s giving up his UFC title in a pay dispute.

“To the light-heavyweight title – veni, vidi, vici,” tweeted Jones, using the Latin phrase of “I came, I saw, I conquered,” attributed to Julius Caesar. Asked if was giving up his title, he tweeted “Yes.”

When one of Jones’ 2.3 million Twitter followers suggested he was hurting himself more than the UFC, Jones replied: “I hurt myself every time I walk out there and take a punch to the head and not feel my pay is worth it anymore.”

Jones, 32, had been eyeing a fight with heavyweight Francis Ngannou, but said the UFC did not want to pay him enough. UFC President Dana White said the fighter wanted “crazy” money, citing demands of $15 million, $20 million and $30 million.

“He can do whatever he wants to do. He can sit out, he can fight, he can whatever,” White said Saturday night after an event in Las Vegas. “Jon Jones can say whatever he wants publicly. It’s his God-given right here in America. He can say whatever he wants. And when he’s ready to come back and fight, he can.”

SOCCER

MLS: The Major League Soccer Players Association voted to approve economic concessions for this season, including across-the-board salary cuts, while also agreeing to play in a proposed summer tournament in Orlando, Florida.

The proposal, made public by the union Sunday night, will now be sent to back to the league for approval by team owners.

GERMANY: Four young players in the Bundesliga addressed the death of George Floyd in the United States during this weekend’s games.

England’s 20-year-old winger Jadon Sancho and 21-year-old Morocco right-back Achraf Hakimi showed T-shirts with the handwritten message “Justice for George Floyd” after scoring goals in Borussia Dortmund’s 6-1 win Sunday at Paderborn, following the example set by Schalke’s American midfielder Weston McKennie, 21, who wore an armband with the same message on Saturday.

Marcus Thuram, a 22-year-old Frenchman, took a knee after scoring in Borussia Monchengladbach’s 4-1 win over Union Berlin on Sunday.

ITALY: The coach of Atalanta says he acquired COVID-19 and was concerned for his life in mid-March.

Gian Piero Gasperini told the Gazzetta dello Sport that he started feeling sick on March 9, a day before Atalanta played at Valencia in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16.

He says that when he returned to Bergamo, which was quickly becoming the epicenter of the pandemic, “I didn’t have a fever but I felt destroyed and as if I had a 40-degree (Celsius, or 104 Fahrenheit) fever.”

Gasperini said he quickly recovered without checking into the hospital and didn’t confirm he had the virus until the entire Atalanta team was tested 10 days ago.

ENGLAND: The English Football League says the second-tier Championship is set to resume on June 20.

The Premier League announced Thursday that play is due to return on June 17 following the coronavirus suspension that began mid-March.

The EFL followed suit on Sunday evening, announcing that the Championship is set to restart around the same time, with hopes of finishing the season by the end of July.

FOOTBALL

The College Football Hall of Fame is boarded up and assessing damage from a destructive night of protests in downtown Atlanta.

The facility’s most valuable trophies and artifacts were moved to a secure facility in case additional trouble breaks out amid nationwide unrest over the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who pleaded to police that he could not breathe.

Kimberly Beaudin, the hall’s chief executive officer, said the extensive glass facade of the nearly 95,000-square-foot building was shattered Friday night. Rioters also broke into the street-level gift shop, stole merchandise and left it “pretty trashed,” she added.

But, other than some broken glass that fell into a large exhibition area shaped like a football field, the interior of the hall was not breached by the protesters.

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