The defeat of boxing veteran Mahmoud Charr in the world championship fight against Kubrat Pulev was accompanied by a scandal over the German national anthem. Before the duel, which the 40-year-old German professional boxer lost on points against the Bulgarian trained by Ulli Wegner, the organizers played the first verse, which is frowned upon in Germany. Before the heavyweight fight in Sofia, the lines “Germany, Germany over everything” were heard over the loudspeakers.
“Something like that shouldn’t happen, especially at such high points,” said Wegner when asked by the German Press Agency. Coach Pulev had been preparing for the fight in Bulgaria for several weeks. Erol Ceylan, Charr’s promoter, told “Bild”: “Embarrassing of the organization.”
Singing along to the first verse written by Hoffmann von Fallersleben is not forbidden in Germany. But since the National Socialists appropriated the lines for themselves, they are considered frowned upon. Currently only the third verse of the anthem is sung.
Wegner praises Pulev: “Confident world champion”
The former European champion Pulev, who only failed to win the World Cup title against Wladimir Klitschko in 2014 and the British Anthony Joshua in 2020, scored the better goals in the duel against Charr. Coach Wegner praised that his boxer had become “confidently world champion”.
It was Charr’s first professional fight in two years. After a legal dispute, the professional with Syrian-Lebanese roots was able to call himself world champion of the WBA association again in September 2023. Charr won the belt in 2017. In 2021, the association stripped him of his title because he had not defended as required over a longer period of time. He was actually supposed to be banned in 2018 because of a positive doping test. However, this did not happen because there was a procedural error in the test laboratory.