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It is now more than six years
ago – June 7, 2005, to be exact
– that the founder of the
original World Boxing Federation
(WBF), American Larry Carrier,
passed away at the age of 82
years after a long illness,
although his influence on
professional boxing and the WBF
in particular is still felt even
today.
However, it was not boxing that
made the name Larry Carrier
popular in the first place. He
became best known for building
the Bristol International
Raceway in Bristol, Tennessee,
USA, the city in which Carrier
was born and raised.
Photo: WBF founder Larry
Carrier with then-WBF President
Ron Scalf at an event at Bristol
Motor Speedway in 1996.
He sold the racetrack at the age
of 74 in 1996. Over the years,
Carrier was successful in a
multitude of business, being
involved in many racing
activities, the horse riding
industry with many of his horses
becoming champions, bowling,
golf – and, of course, boxing
through founding the WBF.
One of Carrier’s three sons
(plus one daughter), Mark, took
up professional boxing as a
17-year-old in 1987. Quickly,
Larry noted the failures of the
existing autocratic sanctioning
bodies and that gave the impetus
to establish the World Boxing
Federation in 1988. (Mark
Carrier retired as a boxer in
1995 with a record of 31-2-1
with 26 KO’s). Ron Scalf was
already his partner at that time
and in the following year
(1989), Scalf took over as WBF
President from Carrier and the
organization blossomed from
there to become know the world
over with dozens of championship
bouts on all continents. The
first WBF world title bout was
contested in 1990 in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA,
seeing Ricky Parkey winning the
world cruiserweight crown.
In 2003, Scalf resigned as
president and the organization
faced troubled times, because of
a default court judgement
against the WBF. This was owed
to the fact that the attorney
hired by the Federation simply
did not attend an ordered court
hearing. From 2003 to 2004,
Londoner Jonathan Feld tried to
rescue the WBF and acted as its
president from England. However,
despite huge efforts, he was
ultimately not successful and
forced to step down when the
World Boxing Federation was
finally dissolved.
After a five-year interregnum
period, in which an obscure
private company from Australia
used the letter acronym to
sanction boxing bouts, by the
end of 2009, the World Boxing
Federation was finally
re-established under its
original name as a non-profit
sports organization properly
registered in the state of
Luxembourg. South African Howard
Goldberg, from Cape Town, an
experienced boxing administrator
for many years, assumed the
position of president, with
former president Ron Scalf
lending his support for the
first half year in the position
as vice president.
In just two years since, the
re-founded WBF has sanctioned
over 60 championship contests
worldwide, regaining and
actually exceeding its former
status and became a serious
contender to the few more
established sanctioning groups
in boxing today.
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