Boxing Has a Very Bright Future, Says Jose Sulaiman

By James Blears

Jose Sulaiman has just celebrated his thirty-fourth year as President of the World Boxing Council, and says boxing has an exciting and decent future, if  the right foundations continue to instituted and built upon. 

During this era, the WBC among its many innovations, has reduced championship fights from fifteen to twelve rounds, and introduced a weigh in twenty four hours before the first bell, to allow boxers to re-nourish themselves. Graduated weigh ins are also done at 30 and seven days. A fourth rope has been installed in rings to help prevent concussions caused when felled fighters are knocked to the canvass, plus full medical insurance for all WBC fights and continuing medical research. Quietly and tactfully, the WBC helps many former champions who’ve fallen on hard times with medical bills and pensions. It’s also achieved acclaim with the WBC Cares program run by Jill Diamond via which champions past and present visit sick children in hospitals the world over with toys, as well as providing words of encouragement, hugs and joy.  

BoxingScene.com  sat down with Don Jose at the WBC’s  Zona Rosa offices in the heart of Mexico City, to glean some of his views, which have been gained from more than sixty years in the sport, and started by asking what’s boxing’s future during the next 20 years- decline… or re-vitalisation:

JS: While there is hunger in the world, boxing will exist. I don’t see boxing dying, except if it suffers a mortal blow . If we do not change the face of the recent past of boxing. If we allow the monopolies to come in and hold the sport and allow very few television networks to monopolize the sport, and permit very few promoters to be involved, then boxing would be in danger of dying as a serious spectacle.

BoxingScene.com: You’re trying to make boxing available for people to watch on terrestrial television channels again.

JS: Well Mexico is a nice example. We’ve got open television here, and now the stadiums are totally full, and the television ratings are bigger than ever before in the history of this country. So the key is to reduce the cost of boxing and make it available to the very poor people of the world. If you don’t do that, then it won’t be a sport of the masses, it’ll only be for those who can afford to pay to see it.

BoxingScene.com: Is it often the case that people say there’ll never again be  boxing superstars like in the past. But there always is someone….like Manny Pacquiao.

JS: It’s the history of boxing. When John L Sullivan, Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis  lost the  heavyweight title, everyone each and every time thought boxing was dead. No! A new hero comes and takes boxing on to his shoulders.

BoxingScene.com: Looking to the future, you’re now trying to organize a worldwide four round and six round  professional competition, and also an amateur tournament.

JS: I’m trying to re-vitalize the sport of boxing through re-structuring, because we’re now experiencing very difficult problems. Amateur boxing is practically dead. The amateur people are in the stick and run style, and that is not boxing. Boxing is fighting. Go out and throw punches- not jab and run.

BoxingScene.com: Some say mixed martial arts is gaining popularity. Do you see it as a rival for boxing. or something that has come and will go?

JS: I know that in the United States it’s very popular, but not in the rest of the world. To me, with all due respect to the participants of that sport, it’s like going back to the Roman times when the gladiators went into the arena.

Now they go down to the canvas and hit each other everywhere on the body that they can, and that’s terrible. Very, very bad.

BoxingScene.com: Is the key to boxing’s survival to make it safer. You’ve done many things already, but are there other innovations?

JS: While the UF C’s objectives is to make it more savage, the WBC’s objective is to make boxing much safer. That’s what we try to do in every fight, seeing what we can do to improve the protection of the boxer as the human being he is. The process will never stop.

BoxingScene.com: You’ve had a lifetime involved in boxing. Are you hopeful for its future?

JS: I am very confident in today’s boxers and I’m much more confident in the future of boxing. But the promoters must understand that things have to change. There are millions and millions of  people who love boxing and enjoy seeing the sport that we love.