Gennady Golovkin Set to Be Chosen as World Boxing President, Will Guide Sport Toward Olympic Games in LA 2028

Former world middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin will be elected president of World Boxing and lead the sport as it prepares for the 2028 Olympic Games in LA.

The boxing legend, who won Olympic silver in Athens in 2004 and achieved the highest number of title defenses in middleweight history, is the only presidential candidate approved by the sport’s independent vetting panel for Sunday’s election. As a result, he will take charge of the boxing governing body, which became the governing body for amateur Olympic boxing this year.

That role was previously occupied by the former international boxing body, but it was expelled by the International Olympic Committee in 2023 following a string of controversies involving judging, corruption, and management.

In his platform, the boxing veteran, whose first term runs until 2027, promised to restore trust in the sport and secure boxing’s long-term place in the Olympic programme, beginning at the 2028 LA Olympics.

“As an amateur, I earned with pride a silver medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics, symbolizing Kazakhstan but the values of fair play and discipline that characterize the sport,” he wrote. “As a professional, I became a multiple-time unified world champion, recognized for my honesty, sportsmanship, and dedication to fair play.

“I am committed to strengthening governance, ensuring financial transparency, developing technology to ensure impartial scoring, and expanding opportunities for athletes of all genders in all corners of the globe.”

The International Olympic Committee 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 disputes about sex eligibility, it said it needed a fresh collaborator by the 2028 Olympics.

In February, it granted recognition to the new boxing federation, which then hosted the 2025 global tournament in the city of Liverpool. For the championships, the organization implemented compulsory gender verification, to determine the eligibility of boxers of both sexes, a move that the IOC is also considering for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.