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Ex-middleweight world titleholder Gennady Golovkin is slated to be elected president of the global boxing federation and lead the sport 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 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 this year.

That role was previously occupied by the former international boxing body, but it was banished by the International Olympic Committee in 2023 following a string of judging, corruption and governance scandals.

In his platform, the 43-year-old Golovkin, whose first term lasts through 2027, promised to restore trust in the sport and ensure boxing’s future in the Olympic programme, beginning at the 2028 LA Olympics.

“As an amateur, I proudly won a second-place finish at the 2004 Athens Olympics, symbolizing Kazakhstan but the values of fair play and discipline that define Olympic boxing,” he wrote. “In my pro career, I won numerous world titles, recognized for my honesty, sportsmanship, and dedication to fair play.

“I am committed to strengthening governance, ensuring financial transparency, developing technology to ensure impartial scoring, and creating more chances for men and women in all corners of the globe.”

The International Olympic Committee organized the boxing tournaments itself at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and the 2024 Paris Olympics. Nonetheless, after the recent Games were marred by rows over sex eligibility, it said it needed a fresh collaborator in time for the 2028 Olympics.

In the month of February, it officially recognized the new boxing federation, which then ran the 2025 world championships in the city of Liverpool. For that event, the organization implemented compulsory gender verification, to assess qualification of boxers of both sexes, a step which the Olympic committee is also evaluating for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.