Gennady Golovkin Set to Be Chosen as International Boxing President, To Steer Sport Toward 2028 Los Angeles Olympics
Former world middleweight champion Golovkin is slated to be elected president of World Boxing and lead the sport as it prepares for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
The boxing legend, who won Olympic silver in the 2004 Athens Games and went on to make the highest number of title defenses in middleweight history, is the sole nominee for president 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 this year.
That role was previously occupied by the International Boxing Association, but it was expelled by the International Olympic Committee in the year 2023 following a string of controversies involving judging, corruption, and management.
In his manifesto, the 43-year-old Golovkin, whose first term lasts through 2027, vowed to rebuild confidence in the sport and secure boxing’s long-term place in the Olympic programme, beginning at the 2028 LA Olympics.
“During my amateur career, I proudly won a second-place finish at the 2004 Athens Olympics, symbolizing Kazakhstan but the values of fair play and discipline that define Olympic boxing,” he wrote. “As a professional, I won numerous world titles, recognized for my honesty, sportsmanship, and dedication to fair play.
“I am committed to improving oversight, guaranteeing open finances, developing technology to ensure impartial scoring, and expanding opportunities for men and women in every region of the world.”
The International Olympic Committee directly managed the boxing events at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and the 2024 Paris Olympics. Nonetheless, after last year’s Olympics were overshadowed by rows over gender eligibility, it said it needed 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 the championships, the organization introduced a mandatory sex screening test, to assess qualification of boxers of both sexes, a step which the Olympic committee is also considering for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
