Gloves are off
Boxer sues doping rival for $5M
Two boxing heavyweights whose bout was canceled when one of them tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs are now duking it out — in court.
World Boxing Council heavyweight champ Deontay Wilder, 31, is suing his one-time challenger Alexander Povetkin, 37, for $5 million in Manhattan federal court, accusing the Russian pugilist of costing him a big payday from a much-anticipated bout at the Khodynka Ice Palace in Moscow in May 2016.
The breach-of-contract trial, which also names the fight’s promoter, World of Boxing, as a defendant, is set to open Tuesday.
The 6-foot-7 Wilder claims the fight was KO’d just weeks before it was scheduled because Povetkin tested positive for the banned substance meldonium — the same drug that got Maria Sharapova ousted from pro tennis for two years.
The 6-foot-2 Povetkin tested negative three times during random drug testing leading up to the fight before testing positive on April 27.
World of Boxing then kept the purse for the May 21 bout, the suit alleges.
Wilder, who hails from Tuscaloosa, Ala., must now convince a nine-person jury that Povetkin, from Kursk, Russia, knowingly took meldonium after it was banned from the sport on Jan. 1, 2016.
Wilder’s lawyer, Judd Burstein, plans to argue that three negative tests followed by a positive proves Povetkin was “gambling that he would not be randomly tested again after his third test,” according to legal documents.
Povetkin’s lawyer, Kent Yakowitz, will argue that meldonium can be “detected in urine after a therapeutic course of treatment for up to a year,” according to legal documents.