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Originally posted by BostonGuy
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Thursday, July 12 2007
By Matt Richardson
And the controversy continues. Just when it appeared that WBC Heavyweight champion Oleg Maskaev would finally be defending his title against number-one ranked Samuel Peter, the negotiations for the proposed October 6th NYC showdown hit yet another snag. According to a statement issued by the WBC on Wednesday, since "Maskaev of Russia, has refused, through his representative, to sign the contract to fight mandatory challenger Samuel Peter of Nigeria, the President of the African Boxing Union, Houcine Houichi, has sent a recommendation for the WBC to not only continue in court on the case presented by the champion’s representative, but to also unfreeze the heavyweight championship by immediately ordering an interim heavyweight world championship between Samuel Peter and the highest rated available contender in the WBC ratings, according to the WBC rules."
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The always loquacious Dennis Rappaport (Maskaev's promoter) however begs to differ with the organizations interpretation of events. According to Rappaport, Don King Promotions should never have been allowed to promote the proposed fight to begin with. King was granted the opportunity to promote the fight when Duva Boxing defaulted on their winning May 7th purse bid. King and Duva both owns a share of the promotional rights to Peter, thus eliminating King's eligibility to take place in the purse bid to begin with. According to Rappaport, WBC President Jose Sulaiman assured him that due to the commonality of both promoters' interest in Peter, the lower bid would be dropped. But King's purse bid never was and his opportunity to promote the fight was allowed, leaving the third highest bidder (Rappaport) out of the loop. King was then allegedly supposed to have sent the fight contract to Rappaport on July 5th but the deadline came and went and Rappaport received nothing. By the time Rappaport received a contract earlier this week the deadline had passed meaning King had defaulted and that Rappaport should then be allowed to promote the fight.
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The WBC has yet to confirm or deny this though, according to Rappaport. Until the promotional matter is sorted out the champion will not sign a contract. "I will not allow them to abuse Oleg Maskaev," Rappaport told *********. "They're not dealing with the weak and meek. I'm not going to let him (Maskaev) be used and abused and disrespected by the WBC." Rappaport meanwhile, also has an amended (as of July 2nd) lawsuit pending against the organization regarding a variety of topics not the least of which is the fact that Maskaev will not be receiving the traditional 70 percent afforded the champion in defense of the title. Instead Maskaev will take just 55 percent of the share while Peter will take 45.
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