The older brother in the Boston Marathon attack, the late Tamerlan Tsarnaev, posed for a series of mixed martial arts pictures for a photographer displaying them in his online gallery. Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in the early morning hours from an explosive blast to his chest and multiple gunshot wounds during a firefight with police.
Posting the pictures would violate copyright (click here to view the gallery), but most telling are the captions.
Originally from Chechnya, but living in the United States since five years, Tamerlan says: “I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them.”
Tamerlan, 196 lbs, will represent New England in the heavyweight category at the National Golden Gloves competition in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Tamerlan, who studies at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and wants to become an engineer, took the semester off from school to train for the competition.
If he wins enough fights there, Tamerlan says he could be selected for the US Olympic team and be naturalized American. Unless his native Chechnya becomes independent, Tamerlan says he would rather compete for the United States than for Russia.
Tamerlan fled Chechnya with his family because of the conflict in the early 90s, and lived for years in Kazakhstan before getting to the United States as a refugee.
Tamerlan stops to answer a phone call while walking from his Mercedes to the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts center, where he practices boxing.
Tamerlan says he loves the movie “Borat,” even though some of the jokes are a bit too much.
“When you start kicking, it gets dirty. That’s what I think,” Tamerlan says. Of kickboxers, he says: “They don’t know how to move.”
Tamerlan says he doesn’t usually take his shirt off so girls don’t get bad ideas: “I’m very religious.”
Tamerlan says he doesn’t drink or smoke anymore: “God said no alcohol.” A muslim, he says: “There are no values anymore,” and worries that “people can’t control themselves.”
Tamerlan says his girlfriend is half Portuguese, half Italian girlfriend and converted to Islam: “She’s beautiful, man!”
He also had an Islam-centric YouTube page that includes a subscription to the channel “Allah is the One.”
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