Gennadiy Golovkin, the two-time middleweight world champion and 2004 Olympic silver medalist for Kazkhstan, was named president of World Boxing at the federation’s inaugural congress in Rome on Sunday.
Golovkin, who has been president of Kazakhstan’s National Olympic Committee since last year, will lead the amateur boxing federation into the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. He succeeds Boris van der Vorst, a Dutch national who was the first president of World Boxing.
“I feel great. I feel more excited. Right now, we have a new team, new view,” Golovkin said after his election to the post. “I have a plan. I have ideas, so many. My goal is bringing boxing’s position back to a high level.”
The World Boxing federation was launched in 2023 to address concerns about transparency and governance in amateur boxing that had placed the future of the sport at the Olympics in doubt. That year, the International Olympic Committee, or IOC, expelled the International Boxing Association, the former governing body of amateur boxing, from the Olympic movement because of those corruption concerns.
World Boxing, the new amateur boxing federation, has been collaborating with the IOC and said that, by January of this year, it had approved membership applications from 60 national boxing federations around the world.
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev congratulated Golovkin.
“He has become the first representative of Kazakhstan to lead an international federation of an Olympic sport,” Tokayev said. “This landmark achievement is a testament to the global recognition of Gennady Golovkin’s outstanding accomplishments and his great contribution to boxing worldwide.”
