I believe this is one of those cases where the right thing must be done for the weirdest reasons.
That said, kick their collective butts! They don't like cheap tactics? Then they had best not fall for them. Anyway, there are plenty of players who play down in major tournaments for money, you are doing no such thing and frankly if they were real chess players they would take the challenge head on!
But if you wish to withdraw, do it. That is your choice and is not fair nor unfair. If they are accusing you of any foul play, they have no right to judge you for the actions you take after they opened their mouths.
First I will give you a background of myself.
I don't play OTB and has never been rated before coming here at chess.com, I started playing chess regularly, here at cc around 4 months back. At that time I had no idea of what mt fair rating should be. So after few games when my rating was around 1350 I accidently withdrew from an online tournament and my rating took a sever blow and went down to 1062. I wanted to play and improve my rating so I entered in a couple of tournaments with appropriate rating limits. I got through to next round
Now my rating is in early 1600s and that the secod rounds start in those tournament or about to start. Suddenly I am the highest rated player in those tournament.
My question: I believe it will be a disrespect to my fellow players if I withdraw from those tournaments but there are couple of players accused me of using cheap tactic to win trophies.
Is the withdrawal from that tournament fair? Personally I don't want to disrespect other players by refusing to play them cause my rating is higher than theirs. I myself like to play much higher rated opponant cause I get to learn a lot.
I just want your opinion on this.