Fres Oquendo’s Team Response to Dugazaev’s Claims

Fres Oquendo’s team responded today to Timur Dugazaev’s press release that was ghost written by Malte Muller Michaelis trying to justify the non-payment of Oquendo’s purse based on an allegedly positive drug test by the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA).  “People in the sport need to know that this guy, Timur Dugazaev, can’t speak a word of English yet he has his co-hort Malte make up all these quotes and lies. They are both wannabes in boxing and Timur is only a servant to President Kadyrov from whom he pilfered Oquendo’s purse money.  I suspect that once all of this comes to light, both he and Malte will be called to task. Their story is nothing but a ploy to try and justify their keeping Fres’ money and lying to the President.”

“The stuff that happened to us over there is really unbelievable,” continued Tsatas.  “Timur orchestrated the kidnapping of Oquendo to forcibly take him back to the arena from the hospital to make him take the RUSADA drug test against his will.  Fres’ trainer was threatened in an elevator that if Fres knocked out Chagaev none of us would leave Grozny (which by the way, is a worry that also concerned Gilberto Mendoza regarding the WBA judges).   Timur then tried to extort money from us after our passports supposedly went ‘missing’ at the airport while the aircraft was on the runway about to take off.  No, this is not a scene from the movie Argo or some cold war spy novel, but what our team actually experienced during our 3 days there.  These facts are backed up by not just me, but also Oquendo himself, John Wirt, long time CEO of Square Ring Promotions, George Hernandez who is a well-respected boxing trainer and Vietnam Veteran, Dino Spencer, who co-owns the 5^th St Gym with me and was a student of Angelo Dundee and Nate Jones who is a US Olympic Bronze medalist and Floyd Mayweather’s co-trainer.”

“Yesterday, Dugazaev put out a press release accusing Oquendo of testing positive,” said Tsatas. “What Oquendo ‘supposedly’ tested positive for are two women breast cancer drugs. Not steroids. Not testosterone and not masking agents. So let’s be clear. We vehemently deny the accuracy of the RUSADA results and have filed a protest with the WBA and are requesting a full impartial panel hearing under Article 8 of the WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) code. Furthermore, we had Fres tested here in the US by the same company that does the testing for most of the Boxing Commissions in the US and even had his second sample sent to the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) testing lab in Utah and everything has been negative, including for these alleged breast cancer drugs. This was done in response to a Skype text message Fres’ promoter received shortly after the fight that had been leaked by RUSADA and that warned that Oquendo had tested positive.  This leak of confidential information alone constitutes a breach by RUSADA of the WADA Code and irrefutably proves that RUSADA and the people working for it cannot be trusted.”

Tom Tsatas went on to say, “we have contacted President Kadyrov and requested him to intervene to correct these injustices.  He was very pleasant towards Fres when we were in Grozny and even joked by pointing to Fres’ and Ruslan’s faces and stating that it looked like Fres was the guy who won.  In fairness, his government put on a spectacular promotion and he was very hospitable to us and even invited Fres to the Presidential Palace after the fight, but the boxing side of things which was run by Dugazaev and Michaelis was deplorable and the fact that they have not paid Fres his purse or respected the rematch clause in the written contract they signed despicable.  The boxing community needs to know and be forewarned about dealing with these two.  I have all the voice messages, threatening emails, contract and damning information on Terek Boxing and Dugazaev and Michaelis, and all of this will come out in the lawsuit being filed in December.   They duped us into going to save their own asses because in truth Fres really was not mentally ready for the fight because of his sick wife and newborn child and he wanted them to postpone the fight, as was his contractual right, but they refused.  Instead, to induce us to go, they increased Fres’ purse and offered him a rematch if he lost and we were the suckers who believed their fraud.  Well, we intend to get the last word and will see what a jury of our peers thinks about all of this.”

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Dugazaev’s announcement four and half months after the fight took place that RUSADA allegedly found that Oquendo tested positive but only a week after we finally went public that Fres’ $1 million purse had not been paid is nothing more than pure BS,” said Bobby Hitz, President and Founder of Hitz Boxing, the co-promoter of Fres Oquendo.  “The truth is that we objected to RUSADA testing because we knew RUSADA could not be trusted.  The guys at USADA told us as much and that’s why we had Fres tested by the USADA lab which was negative.  But none of this should be a surprise since even WADA suspended RUSADA just last November right before the Sochi Olympics for too many false positives.  The bottom line is that the promoter forced Fres to take the RUSADA test against his will.”

“But what is really troubling to me and what I am having a really hard time understanding is that we provided concrete proof to the WBA that RUSADA violated the WADA Code in connection with Oquendo’s testing and we’ve proved that the RUSADA people cannot be trusted,” Hitz continued.  “And we also protested the fight with the WBA and established that Chagaev’s team violated the WBA rules by permitting Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov to climb up onto the ring apron between rounds to coach Chagaev.  I don’t mean any disrespect to President Kadyrov but Timur and Malte are so clueless they probably don’t even know this rule and they obviously did not tell the President since I understand that Kadyrov is an honorable man and would not have knowingly violated the WBA rules.  But honestly, what kind of level playing field was there when the country’s sitting president gets to publicly coach and encourage his fighter for the three ‘impartial’ WBA judges to see?  Can you imagine what kind of hoopla that would make if the fight had been in Washington and Obama was in Fres’ corner coaching him?  For the life of me I don’t understand what the WBA is thinking and why they are putting their heads in the sand on this one.”

“There are already two pending lawsuits in Chicago over this fight and this is just the beginning,” said Hitz.  “We intend to request a hearing before the WBA under Article 8 of the WADA Code and there will be other lawsuits filed shortly to address these injustices, unless President Kadyrov and the WBA make this thing right.”