David Haye has held talks with world heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko over a possible title fight this year, the Ukrainian revealed on Friday.

Klitschko - holder of the IBF and WBO heavyweight belts - said he went for a meal with undisputed cruiserweight champion Haye last night where the conversion turned to a potential bout.

Haye, 27, wants to step up to heavyweight after beating Enzo Maccarinelli at the O2 Arena last month, which saw him add the WBO cruiserweight title to his WBC and WBA belts.

Haye plans to vacate his cruiserweight belts in the next few months as he prepares to step up to the heavyweight division, in which he has fought only once before.

Klitschko, 32, wants the fight to be in London.

The NFL formally approved Tennessee’s trade of suspended cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones to the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday.
Jones must still be reinstated by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

Arora declined to discuss the details of the contract Jones signed.

Dallas gave the Titans a fourth-round pick in this year’s draft and a sixth-rounder next year for Jones. The Cowboys would get back a fourth-rounder in 2009 if Pacman isn’t reinstated, or a fifth-rounder if he returns then gets punished again.

The Titans and Cowboys agreed to terms Saturday, and the teams submitted all the paperwork to the league office late Saturday. The Cowboys are braced for the players association to quibble over the contract, but Jerry Jones said Saturday that can’t block the trade.

Tennessee used that fourth-round pick, No. 126 overall, on California receiver Lavelle Hawkins. Told that was the draft pick used to select him, Hawkins said he realizes his name will be linked now to Jones.

Jordan Staal’s game-winning playoff goal for the Pittsburgh Penguins couldn’t have made his parents much happier. Or sadder.

Staal’s power-play goal in the second period broke a scoreless tie and Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fleury made the lead stand up, giving the Penguins a 2-0 victory Sunday over New York Rangers and a home-ice sweep of the first two games of their second-round series.

Staal’s goal came with older brother Marc, a Rangers defenseman on the ice, and was all the offensive support Fleury needed while making 26 saves. Fleury helped the Penguins kill off two key Rangers power plays in the final six-plus minutes before Adam Hall scored into an empty net with 16.7 seconds remaining.

Games 3 and 4 will be Tuesday and Thursday nights at Madison Square Garden, where Pittsburgh is 0-3-1 this season.

Staal’s power-play goal at 13:55 of the second came with the Rangers’ best penalty killer, Chris Drury, off for hooking. Evgeni Malkin gathered the puck in the left circle and, shedding Marc Staal, fed it down low to Jordan Staal, who shifted from his backhand to his forehand to lift the puck over goalie Henrik Lundqvist.

James Blake appeared to have an edge heading into his first clay-court final.

Spaniard Marcel Granollers-Pujol didn’t let that phase him, upsetting the American to win the U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championship 6-4, 1-6, 7-5 Sunday.

It was Granollers-Pujol’s first tour title.

The Spaniard came back from 3-0 down in the third set, turning back the top-seeded Blake, who at one point won 18 of 19 points.

Granollers-Pujol, No. 84 in the world, would not go away and Blake, the world’s eighth-ranked player, could not capitalize on his lead to seal the win. He lost in the quarterfinals two years ago, the semifinals last year and reached the final this year.

A dash of perfection was exactly what Detroit needed to go from the brink of a disastrous deficit to back in control of the series.

All it took was 12 minutes.

Tayshaun Prince scored 23 points and made all but one shot from the field, and the Pistons played with a purpose and dominated the second half to beat the Philadelphia 76ers 93-84 on Sunday night, tying the best-of-seven Eastern Conference playoff series at 2-2.

The Pistons squashed all that chatter about heading home with a series deficit, erasing a 10-point halftime deficit by outscoring the 76ers 34-16 in the third quarter.

Umpire Kerwin Danley was released from a hospital early Sunday morning, about 5 hours after he took a 96 mph fastball to the right side of his jaw—briefly losing consciousness when the pitch from Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander Brad Penny slammed into his face mask.
Danley has been a big league umpire since 1998. He has worked in four division series, the 2007 AL championship series and the 2007 All-Star game. He played college baseball at San Diego State, where he was a teammate of Tony Gwynn.
Danley, a native of Los Angeles, was resting comfortably Sunday afternoon at the home of his mother, who attended Saturday night’s game and rode with him in an ambulance to the hospital. His brother, Kevin, met them at the hospital, where they were joined by umpire Greg Gibson after the game.

International basketball is going to look more like the NBA after two major rule changes take effect.

The 3-point line will move back and the three-second area will change shape starting in 2010, the sport’s world governing body announced Saturday.

After Oct. 1, 2010, FIBA will begin using the new rules for major events such as the Olympics and world and continental championships.

The 3-point line will move from 20 feet, 6.1 inches to 22 feet, 1.7 inches. The NBA line is 23-9.

FIBA general secretary Patrick Baumann said it was likely FIBA would move toward the NBA distance in the next 10 years.

FIBA also will reconfigure the three-second area to match the NBA shape, going from a trapezoid to a rectangle.

Adam Scott felt he needed to make a statement by winning Sunday. He did, though, not quite the way he wanted to do it.

After blowing the three-stroke lead he carried into the final round, Scott made a 9-foot birdie putt on No. 18 to force a playoff, then made a 48-footer playing it again on the third playoff hole to beat Ryan Moore in the EDS Byron Nelson Championship.
Playing the 18th hole for the third time in less than an hour, the second time in the playoff, Scott hit his tee shot into a fairway bunker to the right. But he got his approach to the front of the green, then rolled the putt over two ridges and into the cup.
Garcia was within four strokes of the lead after a season-best 65 Saturday, when he had three birdies in the first seven holes. He ended the same stretch with two birdies Sunday—after two double bogeys and two bogeys the first five holes. … Defending champion Scott Verplank (75) finished 16 strokes back. … Tim Herron had three birdies in a four-hole stretch on the front nine. He was bogey-free and in position for his first top-10 finish in 11 tournaments this season until his last two tee shots went into the water for consecutive double bogeys.

Blowing a late, two-goal lead against the team it almost always beats could have crushed the U.S. women’s national team’s confidence. Carli Lloyd wouldn’t let it happen.

Lloyd’s goal in the 91st minute gave the United States a 3-2 victory over Australia on Sunday night in a character-building exhibition that the Americans hope marked their latest step toward another gold-medal Olympic performance.

The Australians scored twice in the final 6 minutes to rally from a late 2-0 deficit, tying it in the 88th minute when Cheryl Salisbury followed her deflected penalty kick with a header that got past Hope Solo.

Rafael Nadal won his first title of the season, defeating top-ranked Roger Federer yet again on clay to claim his fourth consecutive Monte Carlo Masters.

The second-ranked Spaniard won 7-5, 7-5 Sunday, and improved his clay-court record over Federer to 7-1.
Federer committed too many unforced errors, surprisingly on his forehand, and let Nadal back into the match.
Nadal is the only player in the Open era to win four straight titles at Monte Carlo, and the first since Anthony Wilding of New Zealand (1911-14).