Is it true that this photo depicts Nikolai Valuev in his youth?

On the Internet, a picture of three young people allegedly made in the last century dispersed. It is argued that one of them is the future world boxing champion and State Duma deputy Nikolai Valuev. We decided to check if this is so.

Photo with a comment that it is captured by young Valuev, you can find on social networks ("VKontakte" Facebook, X) and on the blog-platforms ("Picabu","Zen"). Signatures to one posts say that in the picture the boxer is captured with his friends, to others - that this is his brother and sister. Many Internet users clarify that the photograph was taken in 1989 in Leningrad.

Nikolai Valuev Born in 1973, that is, in 1989, when, according to some users, a photo was taken, he was 16 years old. However, the person in the picture looks noticeably older. No information that the athlete has brothers or sisters with whom he allegedly captured in this photo, “verified” could not be found. Although Valuev is known for his high growth (213 cm), the man in the photo looks not much higher than the girl sitting next to him and significantly lower than the young man on the left, which also raises doubts about the correctness of the signatures.

There are not many photos of Valuev on the Internet before the start of his sports career in 1993, but some archival pictures of the boxer Share On Instagram. What kind of growth he was in 1989, it was not possible to find out, however, judging by Children's And Youth Photos, Valuev has always been much higher and larger than his peers. He himself told To journalists that to the first class "waved his growth with the teacher."

In the account of the athlete, he managed to find him photo At the age of 16, made during a trip to a competition in Finland. Despite the fact that the picture is not a very clear, naked eye shows that the person depicted on him has nothing to do with a man in a viral photo.

Reverse search service data Tineye It is evidenced that the photograph that dispersed through social networks appeared on the Internet back in October 2015. Part of the posts at the time of writing the analysis is already not available, but some records (for example, in "VKontakte") Preserved. These publications do not claim that the picture depicts Valuev, but there are more than enough such jokes in the comments. It is noteworthy that the network was widely disassembled not only in the picture directly, but also Screenshot One of the posts, under which users jokingly write that in the photo the young Valuev is depicted with the TV presenter and media manager Tina Kandelaki and the soloist of the group “Leg.” Maxim Pokrovsky. Judging by the date in the screenshot, the post was published in the same 2015.

Thus, there is no reason to believe that a man in the photo has anything to do with Nikolai Valuev. There are pictures of a boxer in his youth on the network, and he does not look like the one who is depicted on a viral frame at all. It was not possible to find the primary source of the photograph, but it began to spread no later than 2015. The authors of the posts did not say that Valuev was captured in the picture, but in the comments many joked on this subject. Probably, later one of the Internet users did not understand that this was a joke, and began to distribute a photo with an incorrect signature already seriously.

Photo on the cover: social networks

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

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