Gennady Golovkin Set to Be Chosen as International Boxing President, Will Guide Sport Towards 2028 Los Angeles Olympics
Former world middleweight champion Golovkin will be elected president of the global boxing federation and lead the sport as it heads toward the 2028 Olympic Games in LA.
Golovkin, who won Olympic silver in Athens in 2004 and went on to make the highest number of title defenses in the history of the middleweight division, is the only presidential candidate approved by the sport’s autonomous selection committee for the upcoming vote. Consequently, he will take charge of World Boxing, which was established as the authority for amateur Olympic boxing recently.
That role was previously occupied by the International Boxing Association, but it was banished by the International Olympic Committee in 2023 following a series of controversies involving judging, corruption, and management.
In his manifesto, the 43-year-old Golovkin, whose initial term lasts through 2027, promised to rebuild confidence in the sport and ensure boxing’s future in the Olympic programme, starting with the 2028 LA Olympics.
“As an amateur, I earned with pride a second-place finish at the Olympic Games Athens 2004, representing not only Kazakhstan but the values of fair play and discipline that characterize the sport,” he stated. “As a professional, I won numerous world titles, recognized for my honesty, sportsmanship, and dedication to clean competition.
“I am committed to improving oversight, ensuring financial transparency, advancing tech solutions to guarantee fair judging, and expanding opportunities for men and women in every region of the world.”
The International Olympic Committee organized the boxing tournaments itself at the 2021 Tokyo Games and the 2024 Paris Olympics. Nonetheless, after last year’s Olympics were overshadowed by disputes about sex eligibility, it declared a need for a fresh collaborator by 2028.
In the month of February, it granted recognition to World Boxing, which then hosted the 2025 global tournament in Liverpool. For the championships, World Boxing implemented compulsory gender verification, to determine the eligibility of boxers of both sexes, a move that the Olympic committee is also evaluating for LA 2028.
