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Ex-middleweight world titleholder Golovkin will be elected president of the global boxing federation and lead the sport as it prepares for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

The boxing legend, who won Olympic silver in Athens in 2004 and achieved the most world title defences in the history of the middleweight division, is the only presidential candidate approved by the sport’s autonomous selection committee for the upcoming vote. As a result, he will assume leadership of World Boxing, which was established as the authority for amateur Olympic boxing recently.

That role used to be held by the former international boxing body, but it was expelled by the International Olympic Committee in 2023 following a series of controversies involving judging, corruption, and management.

In his manifesto, the boxing veteran, whose first term runs until 2027, promised to rebuild confidence in the sport and secure boxing’s long-term place in the Olympic programme, beginning at the Los Angeles 2028.

“As an amateur, I earned with pride 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 won numerous world titles, recognized 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 directly managed the boxing events at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and the 2024 Paris Olympics. However, after the recent Games were overshadowed by rows over sex eligibility, it said it needed a fresh collaborator by 2028.

In the month of February, it granted recognition to the new boxing federation, which then ran the 2025 world championships in Liverpool. For the championships, World Boxing implemented compulsory gender verification, to assess qualification of male and female athletes, a step which the IOC is also evaluating for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.