AMb · History

The World Boxing Association (WBA; Asociación Mundial de Boxeo in Spanish) is based in Panama City, where it returned in January 2007 after more than a decade with offices in Caracas. It is a governing body of professional boxing that recognizes world champions by weight class, publishes monthly rankings and sets the rules for its title fights. It was born in the United States in 1921 as the National Boxing Association (NBA) and took its present name on August 23, 1962, which makes it older than the World Boxing Council (1963), the International Boxing Federation (1983) and the World Boxing Organization (1988).

Origins as the National Boxing Association

The NBA was founded in 1921 in Rhode Island, according to the organization itself, as an alliance of state athletic commissions. Sources disagree on the exact number of states involved; the most widely cited account puts it at thirteen representatives. Its purpose was to bring a common standard to a sport regulated state by state and to counterweigh the New York State Athletic Commission, which until then had largely decided who was champion. The first bout it recognized was the heavyweight fight between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier, held on July 2, 1921 at Boyle’s Thirty Acres in Jersey City, New Jersey. Dempsey won by fourth-round knockout and the event drew $1,789,238, boxing’s first million-dollar gate.

The American decades

For more than forty years the NBA was a body with jurisdiction in the United States. Its presidency rotated often, usually every one or two years, among officials from the state commissions; the first was Walter H. Liginger, from 1921 to 1922. In that period it coexisted, and frequently disagreed, with New York, so that several divisions had two recognized champions at the same time. The organization spanned the great heavyweight eras, from the 1927 rematch between Gene Tunney and Dempsey to the reign of Joe Louis in the late 1930s.

From national to world body

On August 23, 1962 the NBA became the World Boxing Association, conceived as a universal alliance open to federations from other countries. A year later, in 1963, the World Boxing Council was created and began competing with it in sanctioning titles. In 1964 Panama’s Elías Córdova became the first Latin American on the Executive Committee, and a decade later, at a convention held in Panama, he took over the presidency. With most of its members by then in Latin America, the headquarters moved to Panama City in 1975.

The Latin American era

Córdova was followed by Venezuela’s Fernando Mandry Galíndez and Panama’s Rodrigo Sánchez. In 1978 the Cartagena convention approved the first amendment to its constitution, and in 1979 rules for the rankings and new world championship regulations were adopted. In 1982 the Venezuelan Gilberto Mendoza became president and led the body until 2015. Under him the WBA launched an anti-doping campaign in 1988, approved a constitutional reform at the 1991 Panama convention and moved its offices to Caracas in the 1990s. In January 2007 the headquarters returned to Panama City.

Super champions and other belts

In 2000 the WBA created the super champion title, at the suggestion of Britain’s Lennox Lewis, for a fighter who held its belt together with that of another sanctioning body. The move opened the door to several champions per division: super champion, regular champion, interim champion and, from 2019, Gold champion, a belt for which its governing documents make no provision. Until the autumn of 2021 it recognized as many as four world champions in a single weight class. On March 5, 2021 Claressa Shields became the first WBA super champion at women’s light middleweight.

The Gilberto Jesús Mendoza presidency

In December 2015 the board unanimously elected Gilberto Jesús Mendoza, son of the previous president, to a five-year term; in 2020 a virtual assembly confirmed him for the 2020-2025 period. In 2015 the organization began awarding its “Man of Triumph” belts. In August 2021 the Association of Boxing Commissions sent a letter calling multiple titles misleading to the public and the boxers, and the WBA vacated its interim belts. In 2022 it signed a cooperation agreement with the International Boxing Association, and in 2024 it resumed awarding interim championships.