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Ex-middleweight world titleholder Gennady Golovkin is slated to be elected president of World Boxing and guide boxing as it heads toward the 2028 Olympic Games in LA.

The boxing legend, who won Olympic silver in the 2004 Athens Games and went on to make the highest number of title defenses in the history of the middleweight division, is the sole nominee for president endorsed by the sport’s autonomous selection committee for Sunday’s election. Consequently, he will take charge of World Boxing, which was established as the authority for Olympic-style amateur boxing recently.

This position was previously occupied by the International Boxing Association, but it was banished by the International Olympic Committee in the year 2023 following a series of controversies involving judging, corruption, and management.

In his manifesto, the boxing veteran, whose initial term lasts through 2027, promised to restore trust in the sport and secure boxing’s long-term place in the Olympic programme, beginning at the 2028 LA Olympics.

“During my amateur career, I proudly won a silver medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics, representing not only Kazakhstan but the principles of integrity and hard work 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 committed to strengthening governance, ensuring financial transparency, advancing tech solutions to guarantee fair judging, and creating more chances 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 last year’s Olympics were overshadowed by disputes about gender eligibility, it declared a need for a fresh collaborator by 2028.

In the month of February, it granted recognition to the new boxing federation, which then hosted the 2025 global tournament in Liverpool. For the championships, the organization implemented compulsory gender verification, to assess qualification of boxers of both sexes, a move that the Olympic committee is also considering for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.