Gennady Golovkin Poised to Become Chosen as World Boxing Leader, Will Guide Boxing Toward 2028 Los Angeles Olympics
Ex-middleweight world titleholder Golovkin will be elected president of World Boxing and lead the sport as it prepares for the 2028 Olympic Games in LA.
Golovkin, who earned a silver medal in Athens in 2004 and achieved the most world title defences in the history of the middleweight division, is the only presidential candidate approved by the sport’s autonomous selection committee for Sunday’s election. As a result, he will take charge of World Boxing, which became the governing body 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 the year 2023 following a string of judging, corruption and governance scandals.
In his manifesto, the boxing veteran, whose first term lasts through 2027, promised to restore trust in the sport and ensure boxing’s future in the Olympic programme, starting with the Los Angeles 2028.
“As an amateur, I proudly won a second-place finish at the 2004 Athens Olympics, representing not only Kazakhstan but the principles of integrity and hard work that define Olympic boxing,” he wrote. “As a professional, I became a multiple-time unified world champion, known for my honesty, sportsmanship, and dedication to fair play.
“I am dedicated to strengthening governance, ensuring financial transparency, developing technology to guarantee fair judging, and expanding opportunities for men and women in all corners of the globe.”
The IOC organized the boxing tournaments itself at the 2021 Tokyo Games and the Paris 2024 Games. Nonetheless, after the recent Games 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 ran the 2025 world championships in Liverpool. For that event, World Boxing implemented compulsory gender verification, to assess qualification of male and female athletes, a step which the Olympic committee is also considering for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.