23.02.07 – By Michael Marley, Boxingconfidential.com – Dino Duva, the leader of the Sam Peter negotiating team which includes co-promoter Don King and manager Iyvalo Gotzev, is pulling the plug. Duva has had his fill of insult, injury and being ignored. Duva is about to “just say no” to continued talks with the handlers of WBC heavyweight champion Oleg Maskaev and returning ex-champ Vitali Klitschko regarding a settlement as to who Maskaev must next defend against.
“I’ve had it,” Duva told me Friday morning. “So has the rest of the Sam Peter team. My next phone call is to WBC president Jose Sulaiman. We are immediately petitioning the organization to give Sam Pater what he has earned, not once but twice, which is the next shot at the belt that Maskaev is holding. If we don’t get that enforced by the WBC we’ll move on in the legal process.
“We can’t wait any longer on this,” Duva said. “Each passing day the rights of Sam Peter are being hurt, being damaged. We can’t tolerate this.”
Duva says, despite reports that Maskaev promoter Dennis Rappaport and Vitali handlers including Shelly Finkel and Bernd Boente have been waiting for a counteroffer to their proposal that Peter take a $2.5 million step aside fee; permit Oleg and Vitali to fight with the stiuplation that Peter gets the shot against that winner, and that Peter would get, at minimum, a $2.5 purse against the Vitali-Oleg survivor; it is all smoke and mirrors.
“We’re the ones who have been waiting for over a week,” Duva said. “The ball has been in their court, not ours. We made a counteroffer a week ago and we’ve had no response.”
Duva believes a) that the Klitschko and Maskaev do not even have the framework of a deal in place for their supposed Moscow title bout and b) that there is dissension and internal squabbling between the Vitali and Oleg representatives.
“I am so pissed off at this Rappaport,” Duva said. “It’s all lies coming from him. Everything he puts out is a lie. Lies and propaganda is all he can produce. The fact of the matter is they cannot answer our counteroffer because the Maskaev and Klitschko camps are not on the same page.”