A method and apparatus for combining retransmitted hybrid automatic repeat-request (HARQ) messages divided into coding blocks in an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)/orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) receiver are provided. According to such a coding-block-based HARQ combining scheme, the quality of each coding block may be compared to a threshold to determine whether the decoded bits or the HARQ combined signal should be saved for each coding block for subsequent HARQ iterations. In addition to reducing the required HARQ buffer size while preserving the combining gain, coding-block-based HARQ combining may also provide fast decoding and reduced power consumption when compared to conventional HARQ combining techniques.