History
The IBF is preceded by the United States Boxing Association (USBA), a regional championships organization like the North American Boxing Federation (NABF), North American Boxing Council (NABC) and the North American Boxing Association (NABA). In 1983, at the WBA's annual convention, held in Puerto Rico that year, Bob Lee, president of the USBA, lost in his bid to become WBA president against Gilberto Mendoza. Lee and others withdrew from the convention after the election, and decided to organize a new world-level organization. At first, the new group was named the USBA-International. They decided to base the new organization in New Jersey, where its main offices are still located.
The IBF's first world champion was Marvin Camel, a former WBC world Cruiserweight champion who won the IBF's belt in the same division. During its first year of existence, however, the IBF remained largely obscure. But by 1984, the IBF decided to recognize Larry Holmes, Aaron Pryor, Marvin Hagler and Donald Curry, already established champions from other organizations, as IBF world champions. In Holmes' case, he relinquished his WBC title to accept the IBF's recognition. It established the IBF as the "third" sanctioning body, and a legitimate organization.
Ever since then, the IBF has been the sanctioning body of many important fights and world champions. For example, Félix Trinidad was the IBF's world Welterweight champion from 1993 to 2000, and is one of a long list of world champions who have been recognized by the IBF. The current IBF Heavyweight champion is Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko.
The organization's reputation was seriously damaged in 1999, however, as Lee resigned as the IBF's president upon conviction on racketeering and other violations for taking bribes in exchange for high boxer rankings. Hiawatha Knight then became the first woman president of any of the world's governing boxing bodies. In 2001, Marian Muhammad followed her as president. The organization was under federal observation from Lee's conviction through September 2004, though remaining recognized as one of boxing's "big four" sanctioning organizations.
Read more about this topic: International Boxing Federation
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)