By James Blears

World Boxing Council President Jose Sulaiman says that he’s prepared to wait a few days to try and resolve the rematch controversy between WBC super featherweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez and Manny Pacquiao.

This follows receipt of a letter signed by Manny Pacquiao advising that he’s stepping aside from his position as mandatory number one challenger and someone else can take his place.

With the feud between promotional companies Golden Boy Promotions and Top Rank still festering at boiling point deadlock, Don Jose is hoping to act as a mediator between the two entrenched sides. He said:

“My message to them both, is to put aside anything that is not boxing, to think this is one of the great fights that the world wants. And they should sit down and share it!

“I prefer to allow a few days of thinking and trying to mediate for this fight to happen. If that doesn’t happen, then we will have to take a different path. I cannot set deadlines, because I must work and that is what I’m going to do.”

Don Jose pointed to the decades long enmity between Don King and Bob Arum, which didn’t prevent the two sitting down, being pragmatic and regularly making deals, burying the hatchet in the contract rather than each other. He recalled: “I still remember the fantastic Ray Leonard vs. Roberto Duran fight in Canada. Don King and Bob Arum hated each other, but at the end of the day, they said HEY let’s work together and they did!”

Money doesn’t seem to be the dividing factor, because Don Jose has confirmed that in a mega fight like this, he’s confident that the WBC Board of Governors would vote for a fifty-fifty purse split.

He also commented: “I am very disillusioned, but I haven’t lost faith. In my life, I’ve learned that the impossible doesn’t exist. It only takes a little longer.”