Name Francisco Varcarcel | Role Lawyer | |
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Francisco Valcárcel (born c. 1950) is a Puerto Rican lawyer who is also president of the World Boxing Organization.
Brief biography
Valcárcel grew up in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico and studied law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico in Ponce, Puerto Rico.
He began private practice in an office in San Juan. Valcárcel's first contact with boxing came during the early 1980s, when he became Wilfredo Gómez's lawyer and negotiated Gómez's contracts with promoter Don King. After helping Gómez by working for him, Valcárcel remained interested in boxing, although he was not very involved in the sport.
The WBO was created in 1988, quickly establishing its central offices in San Juan. Valcárcel became a member of the new world championship sanctioning body, and he rose in the organization's ranks. In 1996, Valcárcel became the WBO's president, following former world Light-Heavyweight champion José Torres at the helms of the organization.
Under Valcárcel's rule, the organization has been able to sign deals with the World Boxing Association, World Boxing Council and International Boxing Federation to hold unification bouts between WBO world champions and world champions from the other organizations. Valcárcel and WBC president José Sulaimán had a long feud, and thus the WBC was the last organization to convene with the WBO to hold world title unification bouts.
During a 2005 meeting among boxing's four major world sanctioning bodies, it was decided that United States areas that did not comply with medical requirements for world title bouts to take place would not be allowed to have championship bouts. Valcárcel declared that This is (only) our first step (towards protecting boxers health).
Valcárcel has three children and two granddaughters