Heavyweight boxing championship records and statistics only universally recognized form of a world championship until July 2, 1921, when Jack Dempsey became the inaugural NBA Heavyweight Champion. The growing popularity of boxing led to a birth of various regional sanctioning organizations, with each recognizing their own champion. The major governing bodies were the National Boxing Association, formed in 1921, the New York State Athletic Commission, found after the Walker Law legalized prizefighting in New York in 1920, and the International Boxing Union, created in 1911 in Paris in attepmt create a unified international governing body for professional boxing. Both NBA and NYSAC made then-lineal champion Jack
Boxing in the 1940s famous bouts towards the middle of the decade, Jack and Montgomery fought four times, and Rocky Graziano and Tony Zale starred in what boxing critics have often called one of the fiercest rivalries in boxing history. The heavyweight division was dominated by Louis, the only man in history to be world champion throughout every year of a decade. He became world champion in 1937 and kept the title until 1949. LaMotta lost a highly controversial fight to Billy Fox in 1947. LaMotta later testified he threw the fight to earn a title shot at world middleweight champion Marcel Cerdan, (note