By Ronnie Nathanielsz

WORLD Boxing Council president Don Jose Sulaiman is calling for a boxing promoters’ summit in Chicago in the second or third week of April.

Sulaiman, in an overseas conversation with www.insidesports.ph, Standard Today and Viva Sports from his home in Mexico, said it was aimed at “bringing together all the promoters in the world.”

“Boxing is right now going through a very difficult moment because they [promoters] are fighting among themselves as never before and this is because of the HBO and Showtime intervention in boxing,” said Sulaiman.

The president of the premier professional boxing organization in the world accused HBO and Showtime of taking the power away from the organizations. “They have signed exclusively some of the boxers and some of the promoters and the great majority of boxers and promoters have absolutely no benefit. They are trying to kick the boxing organizations out.”

Sulaiman said that after the world organizations provided promising fighters with breaks to further their careers, HBO and Showtime who did nothing to discover and build talents, “only intervened in the super major fights.”

“What has happened to those fights?” asked Sulaiman, with the exception of the Manny Pacquiao-Oscar de la Hoya fight, which did well at the gate and also on pay-per-view despite being what he called a one-sided fight. “Every other fight which was just a competition between two boxers with no title available was a total disaster.”

He claimed the TV ratings of those fights had dropped dramatically. “The fights have been a bore.”

Sulaiman noted that a boxer is born dreaming of an Olympic gold medal or a world professional championship. “The absence of titles at stake make the television coverage fail.”