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Ex-middleweight world titleholder Gennady Golovkin will be elected president of the global boxing federation and guide boxing as it heads toward the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

Golovkin, who won Olympic silver in the 2004 Athens Games and achieved the highest number of title defenses in the history of the middleweight division, 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 the boxing governing body, which was established as the authority for amateur Olympic boxing this year.

That role was previously occupied by the International Boxing Association, but it was banished by the IOC in the year 2023 following a series of controversies involving judging, corruption, and management.

In his platform, the boxing veteran, whose first term lasts through 2027, vowed to rebuild confidence in the sport and ensure boxing’s future in the Olympic programme, starting with the 2028 LA Olympics.

“As an amateur, I earned with pride 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 stated. “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 improving oversight, ensuring financial transparency, advancing tech solutions to ensure impartial scoring, and creating more chances for men and women in every region of the world.”

The IOC organized the boxing tournaments itself at the 2021 Tokyo Games and the Paris 2024 Games. Nonetheless, after last year’s Olympics were overshadowed by disputes about sex eligibility, it declared a need for a fresh collaborator by 2028.

In February, it officially recognized the new boxing federation, which then ran the 2025 world championships in Liverpool. For that event, the organization implemented compulsory gender verification, to assess qualification of male and female athletes, a move that the Olympic committee is also considering for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.