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Former world middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin will be elected president of World Boxing and guide boxing as it heads toward the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

Golovkin, who won Olympic silver in Athens in 2004 and achieved the highest number of title defenses in the history of the middleweight division, is the only presidential candidate approved by the sport’s autonomous selection committee for the upcoming vote. Consequently, he will take charge of the boxing governing body, which became the governing body for Olympic-style amateur boxing this year.

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 platform, the 43-year-old Golovkin, whose first term runs until 2027, vowed to restore trust in the sport and secure boxing’s long-term place in the Olympic lineup, beginning at the Los Angeles 2028.

“As an amateur, I proudly won a second-place finish at the Olympic Games Athens 2004, representing not only Kazakhstan but the values of fair play and discipline that define Olympic boxing,” he wrote. “As a professional, I became a multiple-time unified world champion, recognized for my honesty, sportsmanship, and dedication to clean competition.

“I am dedicated to improving oversight, guaranteeing open finances, developing technology to guarantee fair judging, and expanding opportunities for men and women in every region of the world.”

The International Olympic Committee directly managed the boxing events at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and the Paris 2024 Games. Nonetheless, after the recent Games were overshadowed by disputes about sex eligibility, it declared a need for a fresh collaborator in time for 2028.

In February, it granted recognition to World Boxing, which then hosted the 2025 global tournament in the city of Liverpool. For the championships, World Boxing implemented compulsory gender verification, to assess qualification of boxers of both sexes, a step which the Olympic committee is also evaluating for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.