by David P. Greisman
Four days after Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo III was scheduled to happen, five days after the weigh-in fiasco caused the fight to be canceled, and way too late in the grand scheme of things to make much of a difference, the World Boxing Council released a timeline of events relating to their supposed supervision of Castillo’s weight, as well as the letters they supposedly sent to the promoters and the Nevada State Athletic Commission.
In a letter written by WBC President Jose Sulaiman and printed on the fightnews website, the sanctioning body chief said he was “compelled to issue the present statement” due to his “[h]aving heard some statements in an interview on Showtime, as well as some media articles and direct questions with the WBC in regards to the failure of Jose Luis Castillo to make the weight in his title fight against champion Diego Corrales.”
But with the recent controversy and the constant lack of credibility inherent in the sanctioning bodies, the letter reads as inconsistent and not necessarily reliable. It is baffling that it took media pressure for the WBC to send a release that, had the information in it been available to the press and the public from the outset, this past weekend’s fiasco may have never occurred.
Sulaiman leads off with background, noting that in 1997, the WBC instituted its three weigh-in rule for boxers contending for their titles, and that last October the WBC requested for that rule to be applied to a possible future rubber match between Corrales and Castillo.
Considering that Rule 4.6 mandates these weigh-ins for all WBC title contenders, it is strange that the sanctioning body would need to request a rule to be applied when it should have been in effect consistently from the outset.
He then writes, “Unfortunately, the WBC did not receive a response from anyone,” a line that would be repeated three other times.
In April, Sulaiman said the WBC sent a letter to Top Rank approving Corrales-Castillo III as a title fight and asking “to receive the 30-day weigh-in of both fighters on May 3, as well as the 7-day weigh-in of both fighters on May 27, 2006.”
That’s right. The WBC was asking the camps of Corrales and Castillo to weigh their fighters themselves and to report the results back. Fox, meet unsupervised henhouse.
With that WBC letter also not receiving a response, the sanctioning body sent officer Juan Carlos Manzano to Jose Luis Castillo’s camp in Temoaya, Mexico. On May 9, Castillo weighed 68.200 kilograms, or 150 pounds. No indication is given at any point as to whether Diego Corrales was forced to comply with the three weigh-ins and if a WBC officer was sent to his camp, too.
According to Sulaiman, the WBC sent a letter on May 12 to the promoters and the NSAC stating that Castillo was two pounds over the 10 percent limit. Although Sulaiman writes for the third time that no response was received, the WBC had the power to pull its sanctioning of the title bout at that point, but they did not, probably due to the importance of the fight and the money involved.
The WBC, concerned by Castillo being over the limit, performed a second weigh-in of Castillo on May 17, and according to Sulaiman’s letter, Castillo tipped the scales at 66.800 kilograms, or 147 pounds. This is 0.300 kilograms, or one pound more than Castillo was listed at in a press release issued by the WBC on May 18.
In that release, Sulaiman wrote, “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.”
That same release, which was also a letter to the promoters and the NSAC, noted that Castillo would need to weigh 142 pounds on May 27, seven days before the fight.
Sulaiman chronicled that for the fourth time, no response was received.
The next listing is May 27, when “the WBC inquired on the status of the 7-day weigh-in” and they “were informed that Jose Luis Castillo was already in Nevada.” WBC Executive Weight Supervisor Luis Escalona was in Las Vegas for the NABF convention, but he left for Mexico City to be with his dying mother, who passed away on June 2.
Why no other officer was sent from Mexico to find and weigh Castillo is uncertain, as is why it was not thought of that a third party could be hired to force Castillo onto a scale. Again, the WBC could also have removed their sanctioning.
According to Sulaiman, on June 2, “Jose Luis Gomez Camarillo, the prestigious writer for the top sports newspaper in Mexico,” called the WBC to express his concern over Castillo’s health, chronicling Castillo’s diet over the previous two days.
Sulaiman said he tried to call NSAC Executive Director Keith Kizer, but the call was transferred to Kizer’s cell phone and went unanswered.
Toward the letter’s end, Sulaiman does write of the actions the WBC will take for the future, but he also naively asks for a body metabolism fat level test to see “that Castillo can safely remain in the 135 pound division.” Who needs the test, though, when the WBC could look at Castillo not making 135 for the second Corrales bout, struggling to make 138 for his February fight with Rolando Reyes and then draining himself down to 139.5 when the lightweight limit is 4.5 pounds less? Based off of recent events, Castillo probably cannot safely migrate to the 140-lb. division, and may need to jump directly to welterweight.
At the bottom of the Web page, Sulaiman includes four letters, although they are online reproductions instead of scanned originals.
The first letter is from October and includes a press release with the aforementioned request to require the already-mandated three weigh-ins for a possible Corrales-Castillo rubber match. Listed toward the end is the condition “[t]hat both boxers accept to be subjected to the WBC mandatory extra official weigh-ins to be held 30 and 7 days prior to the official 30-24 hour weigh-in before their following bout, with no more than 10% and 5%, respectively, of excess of weight over the limits of the lightweight division.
“Both boxers must accept this ruling, if so voted in favor by the WBC Board of Governors, for the WBC to continue extending its official recognition to the WBC championship.”
Yet with no responses from the camps of either fighter, seemingly no extra weigh-ins for Diego Corrales, it is strange that the WBC would continue “extending its official recognition” to the fight once the bout was actually signed and being trained for.
Even stranger that “mandatory extra official weigh-ins” appeared to be neither mandatory, enforced, nor intended to be done by officials, as both camps were originally asked to supply the weights themselves. Only when Castillo’s camp didn’t respond did the WBC send a representative to personally get Castillo’s weight.
The second letter is Mauricio Sulaiman’s April approval of Corrales-Castillo III as a WBC lightweight title fight.
The third letter was sent May 12 to the promoters and the NSAC and is in response to Castillo’s weighing in three days prior at 150, two pounds over the 30-day, 10 percent limit.
This letter was, of course, never sent to the press, contrasting with the media release of the fourth letter, which noted that Castillo was at 146 pounds, one less than the weight indicated this June letter from Sulaiman, a discrepancy that does not appear to be a typo. Nonetheless, Castillo was “within the parameters of the mandated weigh-ins to prevent dramatic weight loss in a short period of time.”
The tone of that letter seems to indicate Castillo was back on track. As the boxing world would find out last Friday, though, Castillo would never reach his 135-lb. destination. And neither does Sulaiman with his attempts at persuasion and exoneration.
Sulaiman’s letter does not seem to be the smoking gun that the WBC alluded to last weekend. Instead, it is a chronicling of claims that exhibit holes in the logic of the sanctioning body itself. Sulaiman’s references to not receiving responses from the promoters and the NSAC seem moot when their evidence comes in the form of online text and not official documentation, and thus the WBC does not reliably implicate anyone but itself for acting negligently or irresponsibly.