Gennady Golovkin, the Kazakh boxing legend, has been elected as the new president of World Boxing, the rebel governing body launched in April 2023.
The 43-year-old was the only candidate for the role on the final ballot paper and was named president by acclamation at the organization’s 2025 congress in Rome yesterday.
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Mariolis Charilaos, the president of the Hellenic Boxing Federation, was initially in the running alongside Golovkin, but World Boxing announced the exclusion of his candidacy on Friday, a decision marked by concerns over transparency following an opaque selection process that had left Golovkin as the sole candidate.
In announcing Golovkin’s presidency, World Boxing stated that “other candidates had put themselves forward in October 2025 to contest the presidential election; however, Golovkin was the only person approved to stand by an independent vetting panel, which assessed the backgrounds of all the candidates.”
The vetting panel comprises three independent, external experts and is supported by Sport Resolutions, the independent body that provides sport-specific arbitration and mediation services.
World Boxing said the panel is “designed to ensure the governing body adheres to the highest standards of governance by providing independent, third-party checking and oversight of congress and the election process.”
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By GlobalDataGolovkin, a two-time unified world champion at middleweight during his career, will serve an initial three-year term and succeeds Dutchman Boris van der Vorst, who did not seek re-election following the completion of his term after being elected in 2023.
The Kazakh said: “It is a privilege to be elected as the new president of World Boxing. But this is just the beginning. Starting now, athletes will be at the heart of every decision we make.
“On the road to LA28, we will restore trust in Olympic boxing to secure our place in Brisbane and beyond. Now it’s time to move forward as one united boxing family.”
Boxing's place at the 2028 Olympics had been in doubt before the formation of World Boxing, which earned provisional recognition by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in February and will run the competition at the Los Angeles games.
The IOC ran the boxing competition at the 2020 and 2024 Olympics after the sport's previous governing body, the International Boxing Association (IBA), was expelled from the Olympic movement.
The IBA was initially suspended in 2019 and was then removed as an Olympic body in 2023. This came following a myriad of issues around finances, governance, and competition integrity, which the IOC has continued to say the IBA (headed up by Russia’s Umar Kremlev) did not do enough to resolve.
Golovkin, an Olympic silver medalist in the middleweight division at the 2004 games in Athens, previously stated that his aim for 2026 and beyond is to attain full IOC recognition to secure boxing’s place at both the 2028 and 2032 games.
The World Boxing presidential election was one of four votes at the congress, which included one position as vice president and two seats on the body’s executive board.
In the election for vice president, Ryan O’Shea from Canada secured a second term with 57% of the vote in a two-person contest with Thailand’s Chaiwat Chotima.
The election for the executive board had six candidates and saw Michael Muller from Germany and Tatsuya Nakama from Japan emerge with the most votes.
The World Boxing executive board is made up of the president, three vice presidents, four executive board members, four continental confederation presidents, two athlete representatives, the chairs of the committees for sport and competition, medical and anti-doping, and finance and audit.
At its inaugural congress in November 2023, World Boxing had 27 members across all five continents. The governing body now has 136 members.
Dinah Glykidis, World Boxing vice president and chair of congress 2025, said: “Congress is the ultimate authority of World Boxing and to have so many of our members be able to participate in it and express their views on the future direction of the organisation is very important, and a positive sign that World Boxing is continuing to deliver on its commitment to transparency and rigorous governance.
“Since it was launched in April 2023, World Boxing has achieved an enormous amount in a short space of time and I am confident that with our new president and the executive board that we now have in place, following the elections, that it will continue to go from strength to strength as we build towards the next Olympic Games at LA28.”
