Shadow boxing continues out of ring

America at Large: A few days ago I was invited to have lunch yesterday at a Mexican restaurant in Chicago. The occasion was to announce Fernando Vargas's upcoming challenge to Javier Castillejo. The invitation identified Castillejo as "the World Boxing Council junior middleweight champion of Madrid, Spain", which was accurate enough on Monday, when the invitations went out.

Castillejo is still from Madrid, but by the time he sat down to eat at Lalo' s yesterday he was no longer a champion. The New Jersey promoter Main Events appeared to have scored a coup when it signed Castillejo to fight Vargas in the main event of its August 20th HBO card but the celebration was short-lived.

Two days earlier, in Mexico City, president-for-life Jose Sulaiman had convened the WBC's board of governors and demanded that the Spaniard be relieved of his title. Unsurprisingly, the board of governors went along with Sulaiman.

On the surface it would appear that Los Bandidos were once again being led around by the nose by Don King, who had been repeatedly frustrated in his efforts to force Castillejo to comply with a mandatory against Ricardo Mayorga, but in this case it's difficult to feel too sorry for the Spaniard, who backed into his "title" in the first place.

Castillejo, a 37-year-old European journeyman of long standing, boasts a career record of 58-5, which sounds pretty good until you notice that he is 56-2 in Spain, 0-2 in France, and 0-1 in the United States. He was 31 when he challenged for and won the WBC title back in 1999, and even then it was widely understood that he was a caretaker champion, keeping the belt warm until Oscar De La Hoya was ready to move up to 154lb.

That happened in 2001. De La Hoya won a unanimous decision and the championship, and most of the boxing world figured they'd never hear of Castillejo again. Most of the boxing world figured wrong.

By 2002, Castillejo beat Roman Karmazin for one of those "interim" WBC titles, the principal importance of which is that put him in position to fight for the bona fide championship. Winky Wright inherited this obligation when he unified the light-middleweight titles by beating Shane Mosley. In order to get clearance to fight a rematch with Mosley, Wright had to pay Castillejo $150,000 in step-aside money to forgo his obligatory challenge. Then earlier this year, when Wright abdicated to move up to middleweight and fight Felix Trinidad, Castillejo was promoted to "world champion" without breaking a sweat.

By then Mayorga had become the mandatory challenger, and King found himself announcing title fights between the Spaniard and the Nicaraguan on almost a monthly basis.

First Castillejo and Mayorga were going to fight on the April 30th John Ruiz-James Toney show at Madison Square Garden. Then it was the May 14th Wright-Trinidad undercard, and after that it was going to be the May 21st Lamon Brewster-Andrew Golota card in Chicago.

When Castillejo begged out of the latter, he explained that his presence was required on one of those television reality shows back in Spain.

King had re-slotted Castillejo-Mayorga for a proposed July 23rd card (since postponed until August 13th), underneath Hasim Rahman-Monte Barrett, when the word leaked out from Chicago that Castillejo wanted to fight Vargas instead.

Unrecorded in all of these proceedings is the precise time of the telephone call from King to Sulaiman, but you can bet there was one.

Main Events lawyer Pat English had already filed paperwork demanding arbitration in Castillejo's request for an abeyance when the word came down from Mexico that Castillejo had been stripped of his title.

From Sulaiman's summation of the affair you'd think he was the aggrieved party: "WBC interim champion Castillejo won $150,000, along with the undisputed WBC superwelter title without winning it on the ring, in accordance to the WBC rules and regulations, the same rules that he is now violating to the regret of all the members of the World Boxing Council, who always regarded him with pride, respect and affection.

"I think that the refusal of Castillejo's representatives to comply with the WBC rules and regulations and stipulations is comparable to a citizen's violation of his country's law," added Sulaiman.

"We find it particularly unfortunate that the WBC would take action to strip Javier Castillejo while a request for arbitration is pending," English fired back moments after receiving the WBC's fax. "It leads to the conclusion that some in the WBC do not want this matter reviewed or examined, either internally or externally."

Vargas-Castillejo will doubtless go on, and HBO will posture with its " titles are meaningless" refrain, but it was pretty obviously important to somebody.

With Castillejo out of the title picture, the WBC is expected to order a bout for the vacant championship between Mayorga and the "leading available contender".

Right now that would be Oscar De La Hoya - and if King lands that fight, we can promise you, it won't be on anybody's undercard. It'll be on pay-per-view at $50 a pop.