As the relationship between the IBA and the IOC disintegrated, the latter was forced to govern boxing for both the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 tournaments. However, that will not be the case at Los Angeles 2028 as doubt hangs over the sport’s future at the Olympic Games.
It’s been over a year since the IBA was officially removed from the Olympic family and no global organization has taken its place. Subsequently, the IOC has made it clear that if no replacement is found within the next six months then the Los Angeles 2028 program will not include boxing.
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Over the past several decades, the Olympic Games have produced some of the greatest fighters in boxing history. Names like Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Oscar De La Hoya and Lennox Lewis are synonymous with their respective gold medals which served as a springboard to Hall of Fame careers.
Will boxing get off the canvas and fight on within the pinnacle of amateur sporting competition, or will it be counted out?
The Sporting News looks at where things stand with the sport and its inclusion at the Olympic Games going forward.
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Will boxing be included in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic program?
The program for Los Angeles 2028 currently has 36 sports included and boxing isn’t one of them.
"We would love to see boxing; we want to see boxing on the program in LA. Now it is up to the boxing community to organize themselves for the sport and for the athletes," IOC spokesperson Mark Adams told a press conference via Reuters.
In April, the IOC made it clear that a new global organization would have to be in place by early 2025, presumably to give them enough time to get things organized.
Another governing body named World Boxing has some support from key countries but has not been accepted officially.
“The popularity of boxing in America is important and its ability to have kids from all socioeconomic walks of life be able to participate in it is powerful and important,” said LA28 CEO Casey Wasserman via dawn.com
“We’ve always said that we’ve got to figure out a way to get boxing in the Games in 2028 but as we sit here today... it is not on our schedule and we don’t have a venue for it.”
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Why did the IOC remove the IBA from the Olympics?
In 2020, Russian sports magnet Umar Kremlev was elected President of the IBA. Operations were moved from Switzerland to Russia, and the country’s energy giant Gazprom became the sole sponsor of the organization.
When it emerged that IBA debts of over $20 million were suddenly cleared, the IOC strongly opposed Gazprom’s association. The controversy continued when Ukraine was suspended by the IBA following the Russian invasion in 2022.
These publicized events led to the complete breakdown of the relationship between the IBA and the IOC. The latter took control of the boxing competition at Tokyo 2020 and removed the IBA from governance in the summer of 2023.
How long has boxing been part of the Olympics?
Boxing has been a mainstay of the modern Olympics since 1904. Since that time, the only Games that didn’t feature the sport was Stockholm 1912 because Sweden had a permanent ban on boxing.
By the time Paris 2024 concludes, the Olympics will have hosted 28 boxing tournaments over the past 120 years.