By James Blears
World Boxing Council President Jose Sulaiman is proposing that women world boxing champions must be paid a minimum of thirty thousand dollars per defense, and challengers must get at least eight thousand dollars.
Sulaiman says he’s going to propose this measure at the WBC’s annual Convention, which will this year be held in Las Vegas in December.
The proposal raised the eyebrows of several promotional representatives, who attended Jose Sulaiman’s weekly press conference, in the WBC offices on the edge of the Zona Rosa, but brought a sparkle to the eyes of the attending trio of female boxing champions- namely Mariana Juarez, Zulima Muñoz and Esmerelda Moreno.
Sulaiman elaborated: “They are all underpaid. The promoters should fight exactly the same for the ladies, who I’ve seen get very low money, and they’ve started to talk to the press hoping and still fighting, but I don’t think it’s fair.”
Sulaiman said that those women who box professionally today do it for the love of the sport. But he also suggested that if the purses are more generous, it would attract even more women to try their hand at the sport.