A few days ago, World Boxing appointed Gennadiy Golovkin (GGG) as the head of the agency in charge of contact between World Boxing and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Currently, GGG is also the Chairman of the Kazakhstan Olympic Committee. He is not afraid to publicly intend to support World Boxing.
The handling of GGG is considered the latest attack of the World Boxing, in order to completely depose IBA. The underlying cause, in the latest vote of the Asian Boxing Federation (ASBC), most members still voted to stay with IBA, instead of joining the World Boxing.
Of the 21/37 ASBC members who voted to stay in IBA, Kazakhstan is one of the big votes. Kazakhstan has a “big” vote, because they choose IBA or World Boxing can affect the decision of some other member countries. By giving GGG in charge, World Boxing wanted him to put back the opposite pressure, causing Kazakhstan to leave IBA.
Earlier, at the time of Boxing at the Paris Olympic Games, World Boxing welcomed GGG to France. Here, he publicly supported World Boxing. But the real relationship between GGG and the sports world, especially Boxing Kazakhstan, has long been broken. GGG left Kazakhstan to Germany in 2006, and has settled in the US for more than 10 years.
The reason the World Boxing appointed GGG is clear, but if you go deep into the nature of the problem, we will understand: GGG, for a long time, not representing Boxing Kazakhstan at the Olympic level anymore. The fact that he was appointed as Chairman of the Kazakh -Olympic Committee was mainly due to the communication effect, not due to the national sports management capacity.
After the vote at the end of August (most ASBC members chose to stay in IBA), the incumbent president of ASBC resigned from all positions of IBA. ASBC also set a new conference to vote on November 23, 2024. A new feature at this conference is that ASBC is likely not to require countries to vote to choose IBA or World Boxing anymore.
Different from the meeting at the end of August, this time, ASBC may vote to choose the decision “ASBC should separate from IBA to become an independent sports federation, regardless of IBA or not”. It is a safer choice, in the context that they still have to wait for other continental federation to recognize World Boxing.