By Andrey Krikunov

The Russian heavyweight Oleg Maskaev, 41, doesn’t plan to retire even in spite of the crushing defeat in his last bout with Nagy Aguilera who knocked him out in the first round. Oleg intends to have a bout in his hometown of Saransk in the middle of May. His opponent will be “well-known and experienced fighter”, as Maskaev told.

"There are always ups and downs in sports, the most important is not to lose faith after defeat”, - told Maskaev in the interview to Stolitsa C. – “Some experts tell that it’s time for me to retire, that I’m too old…Well, they can say whatever they want, but I’m feeling good. That’s why I’ll go forward and try to achieve good results”.

The defeat to Aguilera Maskaev explains with the "lucky-punch" on the opponent.

"I took the defeat to Aguilera really hard, I felt depressed and frustrated”, - confessed the boxer. – “Probably it was the most difficult moment in my entire career. It’s a shame to take such punch at the beginning of the fight. But such things happen in boxing. It was pure lucky-punch, something which can happen to any boxer out there."

"Such misfortunes happened even with Tyson and Lewis. I also had been lucky-punched twice. So now the most important thing for me is to focus and recover psychologically. If Aguilera had been beating me several rounds, I might have thought about the retirement. But there wasn't even boxing as such in that meeting. Everything was decided by that one episode at the beginning of the fight."