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Former world middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin will be elected president of the global boxing federation and guide boxing as it heads toward the 2028 Olympic Games in LA.

Golovkin, who won Olympic silver in Athens in 2004 and went on to make the highest number of title defenses in middleweight history, is the only presidential candidate endorsed by the sport’s independent vetting panel for Sunday’s election. As a result, he will assume leadership of the boxing governing body, which became the governing body for amateur Olympic boxing this year.

This position used to be held by the International Boxing Association, but it was banished by the International Olympic Committee in 2023 following a series of controversies involving judging, corruption, and management.

In his manifesto, the 43-year-old Golovkin, whose first term runs until 2027, vowed to rebuild confidence in the sport and secure boxing’s long-term place in the Olympic lineup, starting with the 2028 LA Olympics.

“During my amateur career, I proudly won a silver medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics, 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 integrity, respect, and commitment to fair play.

“I am dedicated to strengthening governance, ensuring financial transparency, advancing tech solutions to guarantee fair judging, and expanding opportunities for athletes of all genders in all corners of the globe.”

The IOC directly managed the boxing events 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 the 2028 Olympics.

In the month of February, it granted recognition to World Boxing, which then ran the 2025 world championships in the city of Liverpool. For that event, World Boxing introduced a mandatory sex screening test, to determine the eligibility of boxers of both sexes, a move that the IOC is also evaluating for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.