Gennady Golovkin Set to Be Elected World Boxing Leader, To Steer Boxing Towards 2028 Los Angeles Olympics
Former world middleweight champion Gennady 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 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 autonomous selection committee for Sunday’s election. As a result, he will assume leadership of the boxing governing body, which became the governing body for amateur Olympic 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 judging, corruption and governance scandals.
In his platform, the 43-year-old Golovkin, whose first term runs until 2027, vowed 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 earned with pride a second-place finish at the Olympic Games Athens 2004, symbolizing Kazakhstan but the principles of integrity and hard work that characterize the sport,” he wrote. “In my pro career, I won numerous world titles, recognized for my honesty, sportsmanship, and dedication to clean competition.
“I am dedicated to improving oversight, guaranteeing open finances, developing technology to ensure impartial scoring, and creating more chances for athletes of all genders in all corners of the globe.”
The IOC organized the boxing tournaments itself 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 declared a need for a fresh collaborator by 2028.
In the month of February, it officially recognized World Boxing, which then ran the 2025 world championships in Liverpool. For the championships, World Boxing implemented compulsory gender verification, to determine the eligibility of male and female athletes, a move that the Olympic committee is also evaluating for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
