Golovkin Poised to Become Elected International Boxing Leader, To Steer Boxing Towards Olympic Games in LA 2028
Former world middleweight champion Golovkin is slated to be elected president of the global boxing federation and lead the sport as it prepares for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
Golovkin, who earned a silver medal in the 2004 Athens Games and achieved the most world title defences in middleweight history, is the only presidential candidate approved by the sport’s autonomous selection committee for Sunday’s election. As a result, he will assume leadership of World Boxing, which became the governing body for amateur Olympic boxing recently.
That role was previously occupied by the International Boxing Association, but it was expelled by the IOC in 2023 following a series of judging, corruption and governance scandals.
In his manifesto, the 43-year-old Golovkin, whose first term runs until 2027, vowed to rebuild confidence in the sport and ensure boxing’s future in the Olympic programme, starting with the 2028 LA Olympics.
“As an amateur, I earned with pride a second-place finish at the Olympic Games Athens 2004, 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 clean competition.
“I am committed to improving oversight, ensuring financial transparency, developing technology to guarantee fair judging, and expanding opportunities for athletes of all genders in all corners of the globe.”
The IOC directly managed the boxing events at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and the Paris 2024 Games. Nonetheless, after last year’s Olympics were marred by rows over gender eligibility, it declared a need for a fresh collaborator 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 the championships, World Boxing introduced a mandatory sex screening test, to determine the eligibility of boxers of both sexes, a step which the IOC is also considering for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
