Former world middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin is slated to be chosen as the head of World Boxing and lead the sport as it prepares for the 2028 Olympic Games in LA.
Golovkin, who won Olympic silver in Athens in 2004 and went on to make the most world title defences in middleweight history, is the sole nominee for president endorsed by the sport’s independent vetting panel for Sunday’s election. Consequently, he will take charge of World Boxing, which became the governing body for Olympic-style amateur boxing this year.
That role was previously occupied by the International Boxing Association, but it was banished by the IOC in 2023 following a series of controversies involving judging, corruption, and management.
In his platform, the boxing veteran, whose first term runs until 2027, vowed to restore trust in the sport and secure boxing’s long-term place in the Olympic lineup, beginning at the 2028 LA Olympics.
“As an amateur, I proudly won a silver medal at the Olympic Games Athens 2004, representing not only Kazakhstan but the values of fair play and discipline that define Olympic boxing,” he wrote. “As a professional, I became a multiple-time unified world champion, recognized for my honesty, sportsmanship, and dedication to clean competition.
“I am committed to improving oversight, guaranteeing open finances, developing technology to guarantee fair judging, and expanding opportunities for athletes of all genders in every region of the world.”
The International Olympic Committee organized the boxing tournaments itself at the 2021 Tokyo Games and the Paris 2024 Games. Nonetheless, after last year’s Olympics were marred by rows over sex eligibility, it said it needed a fresh collaborator by 2028.
In the month of February, it officially recognized the new boxing federation, which then hosted the 2025 global tournament in Liverpool. For the championships, the organization introduced a mandatory sex screening test, to assess qualification of male and female athletes, a move that the IOC is also evaluating for LA 2028.
