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

Golovkin, 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 only presidential candidate endorsed by the sport’s autonomous selection committee for Sunday’s election. As a result, he will take charge of the boxing governing body, which became the governing body for amateur Olympic boxing this year.

This position was previously occupied by the International Boxing Association, but it was expelled by the IOC in 2023 following a string of controversies involving judging, corruption, and management.

In his platform, the boxing veteran, whose first term runs until 2027, vowed to rebuild confidence in the sport and secure boxing’s long-term place in the Olympic programme, starting with the 2028 LA Olympics.

“As an amateur, I proudly won a silver medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics, representing not only Kazakhstan but the values of fair play and discipline that define Olympic boxing,” 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 dedicated to strengthening governance, ensuring financial transparency, developing technology to ensure impartial scoring, and expanding opportunities for athletes of all genders in every region of the world.”

The International Olympic Committee organized the boxing tournaments itself at the 2021 Tokyo Games and the 2024 Paris Olympics. However, 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 February, it granted recognition to World Boxing, which then ran the 2025 world championships in the city of Liverpool. For that event, the organization implemented compulsory gender verification, to determine the eligibility of boxers of both sexes, a move that the Olympic committee is also considering for LA 2028.