by David P. Greisman
Within hours after Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo weighed in for the intended rubber match of their trilogy, both fighters were rehydrating.
But less than 24 hours after the much-anticipated bout was called off, a sanctioning body found a different use for water, as the World Boxing Council began an attempt to wash its hands of Jose Luis Castillo.
And why not? Sanctioning bodies will do almost anything, seemingly. They’ll take hard-earned money from the fighters, sanctioning fees for numerous variations of their original world titles. They’ll take credit for doing good deeds and supervising great fights. But they won’t take blame.
Blame is something that must go around following the latest controversy in the Corrales-Castillo drama, and not just for Castillo's camp and Castillo himself, who missed the lightweight limit by 4.5 pounds, misled promoter Bob Arum and miscalculated the backlash that would come from a majority of the boxing world.
No, the WBC is in the crosshairs, too, for their prior assurances that Castillo’s weight situation was under control while under their supervision, and for their current avoidance of the buck stopping where it should: at the people who promised said control and supervision.
On Showtime’s Saturday airing of the Vic Darchinyan-Luis Maldonado flyweight title fight – the broadcast originally designated to be headlined by Corrales-Castillo III – commentators Steve Albert and Al Bernstein reviewed the controversy and received takes on the situation from multiple people, including Top Rank promoter Bob Arum and Nevada State Athletic Commission Executive Director Keith Kizer.
“It has been reported in the newspapers that WBC officials sent a letter to the commission, and allegedly to the promoter as well, that he [Castillo] was not on par to make weight about a week or so before the fight,” Bernstein said, reporting what was written in multiple forums.
On June 2, following the cancellation of the fight, Associated Press boxing scribe Tim Dahlberg wrote, “A WBC supervisor said both the promoters and the Nevada Athletic Commission should have known Castillo was having trouble with his weight because he was weighed 30 days out and missed a target weight of 148 pounds, and again a week ago and missed a target of 142 pounds.”
The next day, Ron Borges of the Boston Globe echoed the same. Responding to Arum’s quote about being mortified and embarrassed, Borges wrote, “He might have been, but he couldn’t have been surprised because the WBC claimed last night it had gone to Castillo’s training camp in Mexico 30 days before the fight and a week ago to monitor his weight. Under the bout agreement, Castillo needed to be within 10 percent of 135 pounds with 30 days to go and within 5 percent last week. In both cases, he was not and, a WBC representative claimed, the organization notified Arum and the Nevada State Athletic Commission.”
But both Arum and Kizer denied receiving any notification from the WBC indicating that Castillo was having difficulties making weight.
“The WBC had informed us back in the middle of May that Mr. Castillo was on par to make weight,” said Kizer. “They sent us a letter, I believe, on May 17, saying that his weight at the check-in was 146, and that they were pleased with where he was at, and thought that he would be able to make the weight and make it safely.”
Kizer, who officially took Marc Ratner’s place as executive director on May 23, said he was unaware of any communication from the WBC since he came on board.
Yet the claims that the WBC had notified others of Castillo’s weight issues came not just from a supervisor and a representative, but also from the president of the WBC himself, Jose Sulaiman.
“We were ignored by promoters, by the Nevada commission and by all of the people involved with the different parties,” Sulaiman told BoxingScene.com’s James Blears. “At the first weigh-in, Jose Luis Castillo did not make it. He was about 20 percent over the allowance. So we wrote to everybody involved in the fight. They should have done something about it, but they ignored the WBC.”
Most astonishing, though, is Sulaiman’s claim that Castillo never weighed in for the sanctioning body, as designated, a week before the fight.
“[T]hey did not comply with the seven-day weigh-in,” Sulaiman said to Blears. “[W]e never received word of where to reach him. I’m infuriated with the promoter, the boxing commission, with the representatives of the boxer, because if they were going to proceed with the fight it was going to be based on excessive, inhuman practices that could be very dangerous for the health of the fighter.”
While Sulaiman is busy passing the buck and portraying the image of a sanctioning body that cares about responsible weight draining, perhaps he should pay attention to the communications that his company was sending, both in the form of press releases and via information to veteran boxing reporters.
On May 18, the WBC issued a release about Castillo’s weight, one that Arum and Kizer referenced in their interviews on Showtime.
“The WBC sent a supervisor to Temoaya, where Jose Luis Castillo is training, to follow up on his mandatory 30-day weighing and his weight as of May 17 is 66.500 kilograms (146 pounds),” the release reads.
“The following weigh-in will be performed seven days before the fight, which will be Saturday, May 27 [the weigh-in, not the June 3 fight], when he must register 142 pounds at the most.
“We are happy to announce that Jose Luis Castillo is within the parameters of the mandated weigh-ins to prevent dramatic weight loss in a short period of time.”
Although Sulaiman claims that the weigh-in for a week before the fight never occurred, at least two writers apparently received reports to the contrary.
Kevin Iole in June 1’s Las Vegas Review-Journal: “He weighed 142 on Saturday in his final WBC mandated weigh-in, and faces a significant penalty if he can’t shed seven pounds by Friday afternoon.”
Steve Springer in the June 3 Los Angeles Times: “The WBC, concerned after the last fight, had sent an official to Castillo’s training camp in Mexico to periodically monitor his weight loss. They had reported he was down to 146 pounds two weeks ago and 142 last week.”
Sulaiman and the WBC appear to be blaming everybody but themselves for fight preparations moving forward despite Castillo not being anywhere near his weight goals, but nobody – not a single person at the athletic commission or the promotional bodies and not a single Web site – has any record of their warnings.
The discrepancy between what Castillo’s camp told Bob Arum about Castillo’s supposed weight and Castillo’s actual weight is for Top Rank and Castillo’s camp to sort out. But the discrepancy between what the WBC said before the fight and what they say now – while attempting to squirm away from the blame – needs to be resolved for everyone in the sport of boxing, from the businesses that deal with them for fights to the fans who rely on the big fights actually occurring.
The 10 Count will return next week.
