… Manager, promoter and administrator who oversaw the career of Julio César Chávez and many others

JOSE Sulaiman, the longtime head of the World Boxing Council (WBC), died on Thursday. He was 82.Sulaiman’s son, Mauricio Sulaiman, said the man who led the Mexico-based council for four decades died at a hospital in Los Angeles. He had been at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center for months for a heart condition.
The WBC confirmed his death, calling him the “father of boxing”. Sulaiman had been a member of boxing’s Hall of Fame since 2006.
“He certainly treated all fighters as his sons and daughters, he suffered from their problems and worked every single day of his life to try to make boxing better and safer,” the council said in a statement.
The son of a Syrian mother and a Lebanese father, Sulaiman was born in Ciudad Victoria, Mexico. He boxed as an amateur but quickly shifted over to working as a manager and a referee.
He trained and promoted many fighters, the best-known among them Julio César Chávez, Mexico’s most famous boxer, and then the fighter’s son, Julio César Chávez Jr.
Chávez was among the first fighters to tweet a message, sending his condolences and calling Sulaiman his “second family”.
“Rest in peace, my dear ‘licenciado’ Balin, like I used to call him with a lot of love,” read a message posted on Chávez’s account.
Most recently, Sulaiman helped Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez, a young champion who last year unsuccessfully challenged Floyd Mayweather Jr in one of the richest fights ever.
Sulaiman also managed to institute new rules and regulations regarding boxers’ safety and welfare. Among these changes was the reduction in the number of rounds from 15 to 12.

(The Guardian)