After years of unrest outside the ring, the boxing nation that performed the best at the Paris Olympics has joined the new regulatory body that hopes to keep the sport in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The Switzerland-based organisation, which is attempting to obtain official registration from the International Olympic Committee, said that the Uzbek boxing federation, whose athletes took home five of the 13 gold medals in Paris this year, is one of four new members of World Boxing.
The Russian-led International Boxing Association was expelled from the Olympic movement last year, and the IOC has set a deadline of “early 2025” to work with a new regulating organisation in its place.
The IOC has supervised boxing competitions at the last two Olympics in Paris and Tokyo, but it does not wish to host a third event in Los Angeles due to a long-running disagreement with the IBA on financial and ethical issues. In 2018, when boxing officials picked Uzbek millionaire Gafur Rahkimov as their leader in spite of IOC warnings, the conflict grew more intense.