Gennady Golovkin Poised to Become Chosen as World Boxing Leader, To Steer Sport 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 heads toward the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
The boxing legend, who earned a silver medal in Athens in 2004 and went on to make the highest number of title defenses in the history of the middleweight division, 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 World Boxing, which became the governing body for Olympic-style amateur boxing recently.
This position was previously occupied by the former international boxing body, but it was expelled by the International Olympic Committee in 2023 following a string of judging, corruption and governance scandals.
In his platform, the 43-year-old Golovkin, whose first term runs until 2027, vowed to rebuild confidence in the sport and secure boxing’s long-term place in the Olympic lineup, starting with the Los Angeles 2028.
“As an amateur, I earned with pride a silver medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics, representing not only Kazakhstan but the values of fair play and discipline that define Olympic boxing,” he wrote. “In my pro career, I won numerous world titles, known for my honesty, sportsmanship, and dedication to clean competition.
“I am committed to improving oversight, guaranteeing open finances, developing technology to ensure impartial scoring, and expanding opportunities for men and women 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 said it needed a new partner by 2028.
In the month of February, it granted recognition to World Boxing, which then ran the 2025 world championships in the city of Liverpool. For that event, World Boxing implemented compulsory gender verification, to assess qualification of boxers of both sexes, a step which the Olympic committee is also considering for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
