The WBO started after a group of Puerto Rican and Dominican businessmen broke out of the WBA's 1988 annual convention in Isla Margarita, Venezuela over disputes regarding what rules should be applied.

In order to gain respectability, the WBO next elected former world light heavyweight champion José Torres of Ponce, Puerto Rico, as its president.

In the lighter weight divisions, however, long-reigning champions during the 1990s such as Chris Eubank, Dariusz Michalczewski, Johnny Tapia, and Naseem Hamed gave the WBO title increasingly more prestige.

The WBO was also made popular by boxers such as Marco Antonio Barrera, Oscar De La Hoya, Nigel Benn, Ronald "Winky" Wright, Joe Calzaghe, and Wladimir Klitschko, all of whom held its title.

WBO president Francisco Valcarcel said he viewed that comment as a public resignation and declared the title vacant without holding a hearing or notifying López.

[12] Since the early 2000s, the WBO has awarded the honorary title of "Super Champion" to certain boxers, in any given weight class, who fulfil a set of distinguished criteria.

[13] Boxers who have been named WBO Super Champion include: Anthony Joshua, Wladimir Klitschko, Oleksandr Usyk, Joe Calzaghe, Oscar De La Hoya, Bernard Hopkins, Jermain Taylor, Kelly Pavlik, Saúl Álvarez, Juan Manuel Márquez, Juan Díaz, Naoya Inoue, Manny Pacquiao, Timothy Bradley, Marco Antonio Barrera, Fernando Montiel, Jorge Arce, Omar Narváez, Donnie Nietes, Kosei Tanaka, Iván Calderón, Marco Huck, Sergey Kovalev, Vasyl Lomachenko, and Terence Crawford.

The World Championship Committee exists to name a mandatory challenger, whom the incumbent champion is forced to fight within an arbitrary timeframe, when this term should be extended, when eliminatories are warranted and when a title is stripped.

Prior to the WBO being recognized as a major sanctioning body, the system displayed vulnerability when deceased boxer Darrin Morris was moved up twice in the super-middleweights in 2001.

[15] One week after British newspaper The Independent broke the story that one of the three men ranking the boxers, Gordon Volkman, still had not heard that Morris was dead.

[21] The main topic of concern was how to manage the mandatory challengers of unified and undisputed champions, in lieu of the promoters and television/streaming platforms complaining about the logistics of consecutive obligatory defenses.

[24] The WBO World Heavyweight Championship also appears as a minor storyline element in Creed III, as one of the belts held by the titular character as undisputed titlist of his division.