This is groundless; Azhar never said any such thing.

ʿAbd al-Ghāfir said: In the final years of his life Masʿūd moved to Nishapur. Though already of advanced age, he would still go round to the shaykhs, take notes, and spend whatever came to him on the students. The benefits he amassed—reports, stories, and poems—stored in his safāʾin (notebooks) are beyond counting. In his papers we tallied nearly sixty separate historical collections, apart from the other genres. He wrote in a neat, regular hand, commissioned copies in Baghdad and Isfahān, and endowed his books to the Aqīl Mosque.

Al-Samʿānī said: I asked the ḥāfiẓ Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad about Masʿūd ibn Nāṣir, and he replied, “A ḥāfiẓ who heard a great deal.”

Asʿad al-Zawzani composed:
With Masʿūd ibn Nāṣir we embraced
the very core of ḥadith, beyond all doubt.
Whenever he says, “So-and-so related to us,”
that chain is truth, without a doubt.
I visit him light, yet depart weighed down—
my sleeves and pockets laden through and through.
Had I found him while still in my youth,
I’d need no further journeys in my old age.

274 – Abū al-Walīd al-Bāji, Sulaymān ibn Khalaf ibn Saʿd*
The imam, erudite scholar, ḥāfiẓ, master of many disciplines, judge, Abū al-Walīd.