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King of the world
Steven LynchDecember 4, 2014
Who has held a boxing world title for the longest time? asked Tom Richardson
The longest continuous reign of any world champion is the 11 years seven months of the American heavyweight Joe Louis. He took the title from James J. Braddock in June 1937 and, after a record 25 successful defences, announced his retirement in March 1949 (he later made an unsuccessful comeback).
The only other world champion to have reigned for longer than ten years was the American featherweight Johnny Kilbane, from 1912 to 1923. There were some other claimants to his title, though, in what were less-regulated days.
The Mexican boxer Ricardo Lopez just missed out on a ten-year reign: he won the WBC minimum-weight title (sometimes called straw-weight) in October 1990, and vacated it during 1999 to move up to light-flyweight - he was the IBF title-holder at that weight from September 1999 to his retirement in November 2002.
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