11 years, 8 months
Longest heavyweight title reign
Louis held the world heavyweight title from June 1937 to March 1949, defending it a record 25 consecutive times, the longest unbroken reign of any heavyweight champion in history.
Boxing's records span nearly a century of gloved competition and every weight class, from the longest title reign to the biggest live gate and the largest broadcast audience. Because the sport crowns champions through four sanctioning bodies and seventeen divisions, some records are contested and others are era-specific, but the marks below are the ones historians and record-keepers most consistently recognize.
They range from the durable, Joe Louis's reign and Rocky Marciano's perfect record have stood for over 65 years, to the very recent, as streaming has rewritten the audience numbers that pay-per-view once defined. Together they trace the outer limits of what fighters and the business around them have achieved.
Records
8 divisions
Most world titles in different weight divisions
Pacquiao is the only fighter ever to win world titles in eight separate weight classes, from flyweight up to super welterweight, spanning a 30-plus pound range.
50-0
Undefeated retirement (modern era)
Mayweather retired unbeaten in 50 professional fights, breaking Rocky Marciano's iconic 49-0, having won 15 world titles across five weight divisions.
49-0
Only undefeated heavyweight champion
Marciano is the only heavyweight champion to retire with a perfect record, going 49-0 with 43 knockouts, an 87.8 percent knockout rate, before walking away in 1956.
20 years, 4 months
Youngest heavyweight champion
Tyson won the WBC heavyweight title by stopping Trevor Berbick in November 1986, the youngest man ever to hold a piece of the heavyweight crown.
45 years old
Oldest heavyweight champion
Foreman knocked out Michael Moorer to regain the heavyweight title at 45, 20 years after losing it to Ali, the oldest man to win a version of the championship.
229 wins
Most career wins by a world champion
The featherweight great finished with a record of roughly 229-11-1, the most victories of any world champion in the modern gloved era.
89-0-1
Longest unbeaten start to a career
Chavez was unbeaten in his first 90 professional fights before Frankie Randall handed him his first loss in 1994, among the longest such streaks in history.
$410M+ PPV
Highest-grossing fight (pay-per-view)
The May 2015 bout drew roughly 4.6 million US pay-per-view buys and over $410 million in PPV revenue, the highest-grossing fight of all time.
~132,000
Largest live boxing attendance
Julio Cesar Chavez defended his title before an estimated 132,000-plus fans at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, the largest paid attendance for a boxing match.
~108M viewers
Most-streamed boxing event
The Netflix broadcast drew about 108 million viewers worldwide with a reported 65 million concurrent streams, the most-watched boxing event ever.
3 golds each
Most Olympic boxing gold medals
Hungary's Laszlo Papp, and Cuba's Teofilo Stevenson and Felix Savon, each won three Olympic gold medals, the shared record in amateur boxing's premier event.
All 4 belts
First four-belt undisputed heavyweight champion
Usyk beat Tyson Fury to unify the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO titles, the first undisputed heavyweight champion of the four-belt era and the first since 1999.
110 rounds
Longest fight in gloved history
Andy Bowen and Jack Burke fought 110 rounds over more than seven hours in New Orleans before the bout was declared a no contest, an endurance record from the sport's early gloved era.
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