It is sad that the great sport of boxing may soon be axed from the Olympic program. But as fight fans have no doubt read or heard over the past months, there is a very real chance, a very real threat, of boxing being removed from the Olympics after the upcoming Paris Games. Due largely to elements of corruption and financial irregularities, the IOC stripped the IBA of its position as the sport’s federation.
The IOC then created a special task force to allow boxing to remain at the Tokyo Games in 2021 and at the Games this year in Paris. However, the IOC will not continue to support boxing after Paris, so unless a new federation is approved by the IOC, there will be no boxing at the Olympics held in Los Angeles in 2028. And it doesn’t bear thinking how awful it would be if there was no boxing at the Olympics. The Olympic Games have been the springboard for so many great boxers who won gold and then became world champions and global stars.
Without boxing at the Olympics, the amateur sport would suffer in an unimaginable way. But Gennady Golvkin, who was recently appointed president of Kazakhstan’s National Olympic Committee in February, has vowed to do everything that is humanly possible to ensure boxing remains a sport at the Olympics.
GGG knows how important a solid amateur background is for any fighter.
“I was appointed as the president, just of the Olympic Committee recently, maybe just two or three months [ago]. And I’m getting familiarized with the situation, and what I learned so far is unacceptable, in my opinion,” Golovkin said, as quoted by BB News. “[It is] unacceptable for the boxers, unacceptable for [the] National Olympic Committees of other countries. And as a boxer, I will try to consult, I will try to help, assist, maybe influence to do everything to keep boxing in the Olympic programme.”
Golovkin, who won a silver medal at the 2004 Olympics and retired just last year, could become a real voice of power in his new role, and we fans sure hope this will be the case. Can GGG use his influence to help see to it that boxing remains an Olympic sport? We’d better hope so. Golovkin is in favor of the “new technology” that can help wipe out corruption as well as human error. Golovkin sees boxing as having a bright future in the Olympics if it is given the chance.
“I recently attended the [amateur] tournament in Milan. It was a licensing qualification tournament. I liked the way it was carried out,” GGG said. “I saw a lot of innovations used to minimize the human factor, such as Artificial Intelligence, score counting by computers, and reviews. All these uses of new technology will make it cleaner. It helps to reduce corruption in the sport.”
Boxing in the next decade, the next decade after that, and so on….boxing in the next century. This is what we want, but is it what we will get? We need more fighters like Gennady Golovkin fighting to ensure the sport’s survival as an Olympic event.
Imagine if there had been no boxing at the Olympics, no Ali, no Frazier, no Foreman, no Sugar Ray, no De La Hoya, and on and on the list goes. It cannot be allowed to happen.