Oktagon MMA has moved on from heavyweight champion Hatef Moeil stemming from an incident earlier this month at the Oktagon 64 press conference.
Oktagon MMA made the announcement on social media on Thursday.
On Dec.6 Moeil threw his heavyweight belt at Lazar Todev ahead of their scheduled bout at Oktagon 64. The belt caused a cut on the head of Oktagon MMA promoter Pavol Neruda.
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Following this incident, Oktagon MMA decided to punish the Heavyweight champion by fining 30% of his purse for his title defense against Todev. Hatef Moeil, upon hearing this, decided to pull out of the fight two hours before the event. Multiple posts were made by Moeil himself and his head coach, which were not appreciated by the promotion.
Oktagon MMA announced over Social Media this morning, that they made the decision to part ways with Moeil. The statement reads as follows:
“HATEF MOEIL is no longer a champion or a fighter under the OKTAGON MMA organization.
Our paths with HATEF have parted ways.
As of December 17th, HATEF is no longer an OKTAGON MMA fighter and has been stripped of his championship belt. Before and during the MUNICH event, he repeatedly breached his contract. Although we attempted to find a reasonable solution, HATEF refused to engage in any meaningful compromise.
We would like to thank him for his past cooperation and wish him the best of luck in the future. We would also like to acknowledge his manager, IVAN DIJAKOVIČ, for his always cooperative and fair approach.
Unfortunately, individuals close to HATEF, specifically coach BABAK, negatively influenced our collaboration and significantly contributed to the end of this partnership.
We consider this situation now to be closed for us.”
The heavyweight Champion also made a post, stating that it was his decision to leave Oktagon MMA.
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“Dear fans and friends, as you have all noticed, our ways have parted ways from me and Oktagon, it was my decision that I will no longer fight at Oktagon and I made this decision last week, a champion of an organization who is undefeated at Oktagon 4:0 deserves respect I respect each of my opponents who respect me and I respect Oktagon but since the incident in Munich where they wanted to shorten me 50% or 30% of the fight is lost my respect I was asked by the organizer to make a show I did but then punished for it will this is not okay. As I said, in the end I decided that I no longer want to fight at Oktagon, no one fired me, but I quit !!!!”
When asked in the post event press conference, Oktagon MMA promoter Ondrej Novotny stated that there were discussions to be had, 10 days later, the promotion and the fighter go seperate ways.
