“What he did to me was disgusting.”
A female reporter has spoken out after she was kissed by a Bulgarian boxer during a post-match interview following his victory last Saturday, local outlet KTAL reported. He claims the two are friendly and that she showed up at his afterparty celebration later that evening.
The reporter involved says heavyweight boxing champion Kubrat Pulev should lose his boxing license over the incident, alleging that he also grabbed her rear after he kissed her.
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After knocking out Romanian boxer Bogdan Dinu at the Orange County Convention Center, Pulev took questions from Vegas Sports Daily reporter Jennifer Ravalo before suddenly taking her face in his hands and moving in for a kiss.
Prior to the incident, Ravalo asked Pulev about his future boxing plans.
“So if Tyson Fury gets through Tom Schwartz, do you think you should have a shot?” she said.
Pulev responded “yes,” before kissing the stunned reporter.
Ravalo has hired celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, who has called on the California State Athletics Commission to investigate the incident, hoping that investigation would ultimately lead to Pulev being suspended.
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“I was immediately shocked and embarrassed, and I did not know how to respond,” Ravola said of the kiss.
“He grabbed both of my buttocks and squeezed with both of his hands. Then he walked away without saying anything to me and laughed,” she said.
She added that the encounter made her feel “uncomfortable and frustrated.”
“I did not encourage or consent to Kubrat Pulev grabbing my face, kissing me or grabbing my backside,” she said.
Allred, a well-known women’s right attorney, said she emailed a letter calling for Pulev’s suspension to the California State Athletics Commission.
“It’s degrading to her. It’s not treating her as a reporter doing her job — but just as someone he can decide whatever he wants to do with whenever he wants to do it,” Allred said.
Pulev denies any wrongdoing in the incident and claimed the two are friends in a statement released to fans.
“You may have seen a clip of me kissing a female reporter following an interview after I won my fight Saturday night,” Pulev says in the statement. “The reporter, Jenny, is actually a friend of mine, and after the interview, I was elated, I gave her a kiss.”
Pulev claimed that Ravola joined him for a post-fight party.
“Later that night, she joined me and my other friends at my post-fight celebration,” the statement says. “On the video, after our kiss, we both laughed about it and thanked each other.”
“There really is nothing more to this,” the statement concludes.
Ravalo denies the claim the two are friends, insisting she only met him the day before the interview. She also claims Pulev requested she delete the kiss from the interview when she bumped into him at the after-party later that night. She refused.
“I didn’t want him to get away with it. What he did to me was disgusting. I felt humiliated,” she said. “No woman should be treated this way,” she said.
“I never had this happen to me before and I never want it to happen again,” Ravalo said. “A man should ask a woman before he kisses her.”
The issue of consent, especially in the wake of the #MeToo movement, has ignited a cultural firestorm around sexual norms between men and women.
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