Rush hold off Predators to win ArenaBowl XX

The Chicago Rush took a page out of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ book.

Matt D’Orazio passed for six touchdowns and ran for two more, and the Rush completed an unlikely run to the Arena Football League championship Sunday by beating the Orlando Predators 69-61 in the 20th ArenaBowl in Las Vegas.

The Rush won three straight road playoff games to reach the ArenaBowl – just as the Pittsburgh Steelers did last winter before beating the Seattle Seahawks to win Super Bowl XL.

After losing six of seven games at one point, it appeared the Rush would miss the playoffs. But they won three of their final four to qualify before their triumphant postseason run.

The Rush celebrated their first championship in six years of existence in a sea of confetti at midfield of the Thomas & Mack Center, where a crowd of 13,476 watched the second-highest scoring ArenaBowl.

Boxing

Pair enter hall

Rivals Michael Carbajal and Humberto “Chiquita” Gonzalez elevated the flyweight division to prominence with their three classic fights in the mid-1990s.

Meeting again Sunday in Canastota, N.Y., they were enshrined together in the International Boxing Hall of Fame along with 10 other fighters and ring personalities, including late lightweight champion Edwin Rosario and historian Hank Kaplan.

“We had three great fights. We put on a show and showed that the little guys could hit as hard as the heavyweights, both of us,” said Carbajal, who wept as he received his Hall of Fame ring.

In what many called the fight of the year in 1993, the hard-hitting “Little Hands of Stone” Carbajal rose from two knockdowns to stop the Mexican Gonzalez with a seventh-round knockout. The fight in a Las Vegas casino parking lot drew 20,000 fans and a worldwide pay-per-view audience and generated the first $1 million dollar purse for flyweights.

Miscellany

Randolph unpunished

The Trail Blazers will not discipline forward Zach Randolph for his involvement in a speed racing incident in downtown Portland, the team said.

Randolph was in the passenger seat of a car he owns when Taquan Portis, 22, was cited early Thursday for racing and other traffic violations.

Police found two loaded handguns, but Randolph was not cited because he has a concealed weapons permit. Officers smelled marijuana, but couldn’t find any evidence of drug use when they searched the car, Portland police said.

•Levi Leipheimer, a Butte, Mont., native, tuned up for next month’s Tour de France by capturing the Dauphine Libere in Grenoble, France, and becoming the fourth American to win the cycling race.

•Harvard won the 141st Harvard-Yale Regatta in Ledyard, Conn., to remain unbeaten for the seventh consecutive year.

The Crimson finished the 4-mile men’s heavyweight race in 23 minutes, 22.6 seconds., two boat lengths ahead of Yale, which finished in 23:30.4.

•Jockey Chance Rollins was critically injured in San Mateo, Calif., when he fell off his horse at Bay Meadows, track officials said.

The 36-year-old Rollins suffered severe head injuries in the accident.