Golovkin Poised to Become Chosen as International Boxing Leader, To Steer Sport Toward Olympic Games in LA 2028
Former world middleweight champion Golovkin will be chosen as the head of the global boxing federation and lead the sport as it prepares for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
Golovkin, who won Olympic silver in the 2004 Athens Games and went on to make 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 assume leadership of World Boxing, which was established as the authority for amateur Olympic boxing recently.
That role was previously occupied 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 first term lasts through 2027, promised to rebuild confidence in the sport and secure boxing’s long-term place in the Olympic lineup, starting with the 2028 LA Olympics.
“During my amateur career, I proudly won a second-place finish at the Olympic Games Athens 2004, symbolizing Kazakhstan but the values of fair play and discipline that characterize the sport,” he wrote. “As a professional, I won numerous world titles, recognized for my honesty, sportsmanship, and dedication to clean competition.
“I am dedicated to strengthening governance, ensuring financial transparency, advancing tech solutions to guarantee fair judging, and creating more chances 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 Paris 2024 Games. Nonetheless, after last year’s Olympics were marred by rows over gender eligibility, it declared a need for a new partner in time for the 2028 Olympics.
In the month of February, it officially recognized the new boxing federation, which then hosted the 2025 global tournament in Liverpool. For the championships, World Boxing introduced a mandatory sex screening test, to assess qualification of male and female athletes, a step which the IOC is also considering for LA 2028.
