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Ex-middleweight world titleholder Gennady Golovkin will be chosen as the head of World Boxing and guide boxing as it prepares for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

The boxing legend, 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 approved 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.

That role used to be held by the International Boxing Association, but it was banished by the IOC in the year 2023 following a string of controversies involving judging, corruption, and management.

In his manifesto, 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 programme, beginning at the 2028 LA Olympics.

“As an amateur, I earned with pride a second-place finish at the 2004 Athens Olympics, symbolizing Kazakhstan but the values of fair play and discipline that define Olympic boxing,” he stated. “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 expanding opportunities for men and women in all corners of the globe.”

The International Olympic Committee directly managed the boxing events at the 2021 Tokyo Games and the Paris 2024 Games. Nonetheless, after last year’s Olympics were overshadowed by rows over sex eligibility, it declared a need for a new partner in time for 2028.

In the month of February, it granted recognition to the new boxing federation, which then hosted the 2025 global tournament in the city of Liverpool. For that event, the organization introduced a mandatory sex screening test, to assess qualification of boxers of both sexes, a move that the Olympic committee is also evaluating for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.