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Ex-middleweight world titleholder Gennady Golovkin is slated to be chosen as the head of the global boxing federation and lead the sport as it heads toward the 2028 Olympic Games in LA.

The boxing legend, who won Olympic silver in the 2004 Athens Games and achieved 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. As a result, he will assume leadership of World Boxing, which became the governing body for Olympic-style amateur boxing recently.

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

In his manifesto, the 43-year-old Golovkin, whose first term lasts through 2027, promised to rebuild confidence in the sport and ensure boxing’s future in the Olympic programme, starting with the 2028 LA Olympics.

“During my amateur career, I earned with pride a silver medal at the Olympic Games Athens 2004, symbolizing Kazakhstan but the principles of integrity and hard work that characterize the sport,” he wrote. “In my pro career, I became a multiple-time unified world champion, known for my honesty, sportsmanship, and dedication to clean competition.

“I am committed to improving oversight, guaranteeing open finances, advancing tech solutions to ensure impartial scoring, and expanding opportunities for men and women in every region of the world.”

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 gender 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, World Boxing introduced a mandatory sex screening test, to assess qualification of male and female athletes, a move that the Olympic committee is also evaluating for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.