The Italian fighter of Cuban origins Frank Chamizo, two-time world champion in free wrestling, said in an interview with the newspaper The Republic who last weekend suffered a bribery attempt before a wrestling match in Baku, Azerbaijan, where he then faced Azerbaijani fighter Turan Bayramov. Chamizo said he immediately rejected the proposal.
I was wrestling at their house and they had bought everything. The same referee was with the Azerbaijanis throughout the tournament. They came to me offering me money, $300,000 to lose. I don’t want to say who, but it happened the morning of the weigh-in.
The match with Bayramov was valid for the qualifications for the Paris 2024 Olympics and Chamizo managed to beat his opponent: the five judges of the match had awarded him the victory. But then the carpet president, who coordinates the work of the referee and judges, asked for a review of the images and overturned the verdict of the five judges, a rather controversial decision contested by Chamizo. In the interview with Republicand before that in a post on Instagram, Chamizo accused the organization of the Baku tournament of being corrupt and of having deliberately decided to make him lose, although according to him he had won the match regularly.
Chamizo was born in Cuba on July 10, 1992 and obtained Italian citizenship in 2015. With Italy he won the World Cup in Las Vegas in 2015 and in Paris in 2017, but also four gold medals at the European Championships. He represented Italy in two Olympics: in Rio de Janeiro 2016, when he won a bronze medal, and in Tokyo 2020, when he came fifth. To qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympics, Chamizo now has one last chance, in a tournament to be held in May in Turkey.
2024-04-10 09:32:04
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