'Russian Giant' Valuev set for search of Yeti in Siberia

Russian boxer Nikolai Valuev, the former WBA heavyweight world champion, will travel to Western Siberia on Thursday to try to find Yeti and to "talk to him about life," a spokesman for Siberia's Kemerovo regional administration said. "Valuev is interested in the phenomenon of Yeti, who has been actively searched for in Tashtagol," the spokesman said adding that the 'Russian Giant' will spent two days in Siberia's taiga.He said, however, that Valuev, who is 213 cm (7'0" feet) tall and weighs over 140 kg (some 315 lbs), has no intentions to harm Yeti and hunt the creature as he only wants to find him and have a conversation. The issue of the possible existence of Yeti in Russia's Siberia has been widely discussed by bloggers and one of them assumed that Valuev is the Yeti, who once went mountain skiing in Sheregesh, got lost and is now tries to find his way home, the spokesman said. In February 2009, the Kemerovo regional administration released a report that local hunters had spotted "some hairy humanoid creatures with a height of 1.5-2 meters [5'6"-6'] near the Azass Cave in Mount Shoriya, near Siberia's renowned ski resort, Sheregesh. The report was illustrated with a photograph from inside the cave showing the footprint of an unidentified creature.Several advertising and PR experts said that Bigfoot reports were probably teasers for attracting tourists to the region. Three months after the sensational news tourism agencies had introduced excursions to "Yeti's Cave." According to the head of the department of anthropology at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology in Moscow, anthropologists have never seen or studied the body of a Bigfoot or yeti, although there are numerous reports of their sightings throughout the world.