This is all fallout from that awful fight between Oquendo and Chagaev in Chechnya a few years ago. Rubbish fight followed up with a highly suspect failed drugs test following a very questionable decision win for Chagaev. (The same thing happened to Lucas Browne after he knocked out Chagaev at the same venue in his last fight.) Then he never got paid his purse, and filed a lawsuit, and the WBA have had him as mandatory for years, seemingly as an apology, without him ever fighting. Weird as hell.
Man though, I can't help but think back to that weird Chagaev fight. That was one of the most surreal boxing events I've seen. It was on at something like 1 in the afternoon in the UK because of the timezone difference, took place in this big open air stadium in Grozny, and there was all this bizarre slavic ceremony and folk dancing going on. They had footage of what looked like celebrities rolling up in limos and sports cars like it was a big movie premiere. Evander Holyfield was there. There was this ridiculous build up with a disturbingly well-produced video presenting Chagaev as some kind of slavic knight defending his homeland, despite the fact that he's from Uzbekistan, not Chechnya. All of this for a very subpar "regular" champion defending his title against a practically anonymous guy with no notable wins coming in at literally 24 hours notice (he was supposed to be fighting Shannon Briggs at first.) The national anthems took an eternity. The fight was absolutely terrible, both guys fought like they had lead weights dangling from their gloves. Chagaev got the win on a really narrow points decision, which I honestly think was a robbery. Neither guy fought well but Oquendo was mostly outboxing him. Presiding over the whole event was the bearded, slightly goony-looking Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov, who was apparently best buddies with Chagaev and would pop on down to Chagaev's corner to give advice (when he wasn't doing that, if I remember right he was sat on a literal throne.) That was the first time I ever saw him on TV. Fast forward to 2017 and I see Kadyrov for the second time on the news as he oversees a mass purge of ****sexuals in Chechnya provoking international outrage (still ongoing afaik.) It was bizarre seeing this guy accused of, and not denying, his complicity in an atrocity, and my reaction being "holy crap, that's the weird guy from that crap boxing match I watched on a Saturday afternoon on Boxnation in 2014!"
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