WBC pledges support for RI's pro boxing
JAKARTA (JP): The World Boxing Council (WBC) has offered to assist Indonesia with the composition of standards for professional boxing management and in the development of professional boxers, the council's president, Jose Sulaiman, told a media briefing at the Borobudur Hotel on Saturday.
Sulaiman, from Mexico, arrived her on Saturday morning to attend a meeting with the WBC finance committee, but he was keen to share his vision of increasing the council's role in the development of professional boxing in Indonesia.
"In Indonesia, there hasn't really been professional boxing. It's not handled properly. I've come here with an infrastructure and the ability to teach how professional boxing should be handled.
"I will help to do many things for this country, and I plan to put it at the highest level in the world of professional boxing."
Sulaiman said the WBC offered its help to develop medical access for boxers, new technical skills and tactics, and to establish a boxing school or high-tech gymnasium.
"You need a national plan for amateur boxing so that a boxer will not only read about fighting, fight in the streets and then go into the ring. You need a good structure for the administration of boxing.
"So you need to invite medics and good promoters here who want to build instead of destroy, and invest in the boxers' futures."
"We can provide a technical group, knowledge, strong promoters and anything else required to help this country. I also want to create a world boxing school. We are now in the process of building modern gyms applying the latest technology. We have set up some of them in South Africa, Spain, Mexico and Argentina," he said.
Sulaiman said he would meet with authorities to discuss the possibility of establishing a boxing school in Indonesia. He is scheduled to meet Endro Sumardjo, the expert staff member of the minister of national education, on Monday.
"The WBC will pay for all the gym equipment. We'll ask the authorities to provide the property, a building, and we'll install everything inside it."
Sulaiman said that Indonesia would not have difficulties attracting sponsors for financial support if its professional boxing already had a good structure.
The WBC was founded in 1963 and has 161 member countries.
It was established to control world title fights; determine monthly ratings; provide medical programs and life insurance for boxers; apply rules and regulations for professional boxing; sponsor a sports medicine foundation; promote training for boxers, referees, judges, doctors specializing in boxing and trainers; implement pension plans; conduct a world boxing school; and bestow awards.
Manahan Situmorang, chairman of the Indonesian Boxing Association (ATI) -- one of the two professional boxing associations in this country, along with the Indonesian Boxing Committee (KTI) -- said his association would be prepared to cooperate with the WBC in setting up and managing a boxing school.
"We are trying to work with the government. If the plan can be realized, we don't mind helping to manage the gym so that any boxers and trainers can use it," he said after the conference.
Manahan also said that the ATI would request the WBC's support to stage a WBC intercontinental bout in Indonesia.
"We'll also ask Sulaiman to allow Indonesian professional boxers to get a WBC ranking, or at least a WBC intercontinental ranking," he said.
Manahan added that the ATI also asked the WBC to provide foreign coaches who had trained world champions, as well as training for local referees and judges. (ivy)