Golovkin Set to Be Chosen as International Boxing Leader, To Steer Boxing Toward 2028 Los Angeles Olympics
Former world middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin will be elected president of the global boxing federation and guide boxing as it heads toward the 2028 Olympic Games in LA.
Golovkin, who earned a silver medal in the 2004 Athens Games and achieved the highest number of title defenses in middleweight history, is the only presidential candidate endorsed by the sport’s autonomous selection committee for Sunday’s election. As a result, he will take charge of the boxing governing body, which became the governing body for Olympic-style amateur boxing recently.
That role used to be held by the former international boxing body, but it was expelled by the IOC in 2023 following a series of judging, corruption and governance scandals.
In his platform, the 43-year-old Golovkin, whose initial term runs until 2027, vowed to rebuild confidence in the sport and secure boxing’s long-term place in the Olympic programme, starting with the Los Angeles 2028.
“During my amateur career, I proudly won 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 became a multiple-time unified world champion, recognized for my honesty, sportsmanship, and dedication to fair play.
“I am dedicated to strengthening governance, ensuring financial transparency, advancing tech solutions to ensure impartial scoring, and creating more chances for men and women in every region of the world.”
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 marred by rows over gender eligibility, it declared a need for a fresh collaborator in time for the 2028 Olympics.
In the month of February, it granted recognition to World Boxing, which then ran the 2025 world championships in the city of Liverpool. For the championships, the organization implemented compulsory gender verification, to assess qualification of male and female athletes, a step which the Olympic committee is also considering for LA 2028.