Over the years there have been numerous books written on the history of the world heavyweight boxing championship and now Koos van Zyl from Namibia has added to the illustrious history of the top division in boxing, with his book Boxing: Heavy Weight World Champions Through the Ages.
This must be the first boxing book written by a Namibian and deals with the various champions from 1885, when John L. Sullivan claimed the heavyweight championship of the world on 29 August when he won on a disqualification against Dominick McCaffrey, up until the present champions, Tyson Fury who holds the WBC version of the title, and Oleksandr Usyk, the holder of the WBA, WBO and IBF belts.
During the early years there was only one world champion in the gloved era beginning with Sullivan who was the world bare-knuckle champion before being recognised as the first gloved universal champion.
The occurrence of various champions for the respective organisations followed later.
According to Van Zyl, over the years there have been 22 normal, 64 “major” and 27 “minor” champions, which is 113 heavyweight champions in total.
This publication aims to place specific focus on some of the most prominent figures.