By Mark Vester

Nikolai Valuev is steaming mad over the cancellation of his rematch with Ruslan Chagaev, which was scheduled for last Saturday in Helsinki. The fight was cancelled when Chagaev's blood test results revealed that he was suffering from a mild form of hepititis B. The results came back nearly four hours after both fighters had weighed in. Valuev says that Chagaev's team knew something was wrong by the way the blood tests were handled.

“Now we can only regret that all this happened. It’s a great disappointment for the fans and the sportsmen,” Nikolai Valuev said to Russian outlet Sportbox.

“This is an outrageous impudence. We have to find out, who’s behind this. All the medical tests are to be presented to experts in advance. But Chagaev’s team filed a paper claiming that everything is all right. But these tests were carried out by the doctor of the Chagaev team in Hamburg, a dependent person. We should’ve insisted a lot earlier on the tests to be conducted by an independent physician.”

Valuev had no intention of risking his own health, and the health of his family, by going through with the rematch.

”I must take care not only about my own health. Any normal person in this case would think about his family, about the possible consequences. Hepatitis B is not a cold. On the one hand, if the sick boxer missed a punch into the body frame, he risks the collapse of the liver. Then minutes will decide whether the doctors will be able to save his life. Secondly, in the ring you are not only withstanding your opponent, but also an invisible infection he carries. I have no idea how this would impact on the fight,” Valuev says.

“All this time, I piously believed that Chagaev caught hepatitis after our first fight in Stuttgart. The first information about him being infected appeared. He allegedly went to Uzbekistan and it is there where he got the disease… But back then it was rumor. No one could really verify whether Ruslan was ill or not, and the moment he fell ill."

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