World Boxing Association
organization
The World Boxing Association (WBA), formerly known as the National Boxing Association (NBA), is an international professional boxing organization based in Panama. The WBA awards its world championship title at the professional level.
Founded in the United States in 1921 by 13 state representatives as the NBA, it is the oldest regulating fights. In 1962, it changed its name in recognition of boxing's growing popularity around the world and began to admit other nations as members. By 1975, a majority of its members were Latin American nations and the organization headquarters was moved to Panama City, Panama. It moved again in the 1990s to Venezuela before returning to Panama in 2007.
Alongside the World Boxing Council (WBC), International Boxing Federation (IBF) and World Boxing Organization (WBO), it is one of four major organizations which sanctions professional boxing bouts. As of August 2024, boxing website BoxRec no longer recognizes WBA world title fights or world champions.
History
The WBA can be traced back to the original National Boxing Association, organized in 1921. The first bout it recognized was the Jack Dempsey–Georges Carpentier heavyweight championship bout in New Jersey.
The public source identifies “World Boxing Association” as organization. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around World, Boxing and Association.
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This entry incorporates text from “World Boxing Association” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.