Boxing in the 1950s and Floyd Patterson emerged as the youngest heavyweight champion in history (coincidentally, he beat Moore for the title left vacant by Marciano). Patterson remained the youngest heavyweight champion in history until November 22, 1986, when a 20-year-old Mike Tyson defeated the 31-year-old WBC Heavyweight Champion Trevor Berbick by TKO in round 2. The dark side of boxing once again emerged: Jake LaMotta alleged at a hearing that he had thrown a fight with Billy Fox in exchange for a try at the world Middleweight title, and Jim Norris, an important promoter of the time, was associated with Blinky Palermo and
World Boxing Organization (as they did with several established champions in the lower weight divisions), the WBO sanctioned a fight between two relatively unknown fighters, Francesco Damiani (winner of the super heavyweight silver medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics) and Johnny DuPlooy, to determine the inaugural holder of its own heavyweight title in 1989. All other sanctioning bodies of boxing recognized the then-undefeated Mike Tyson as the undisputed heavyweight champion. Damiani, meanwhile, went on to become the first WBO heavyweight champion. At heavyweight, especially in the United States, the organization initially struggled to gain credibility as a major sanctioning body, with WBO heavyweight