International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach called World Boxing the only viable provisional international federation for boxing during an IOC press conference on Thursday to cap off a three-day IOC Executive Board meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland.
“This is in the hands of the national boxing federations and whether they want their athletes to have an opportunity to win Olympic medals or not,” said Bach when quizzed on the future of boxing. “It is very easy and we see there are some moves with a number of federations.”
Boxing’s inclusion in future Olympic Games programmes has been up in the air since the IOC suspended the International Boxing Federation (IBA) in 2019 due to finance, governance and integrity concerns before then withdrawing recognition of the IBA as the chief International Federation for Boxing altogether last year.
IBA was consequently not involved in either the Paris 2024 Olympic Games or the previous edition in Tokyo due to its failure to implement reforms and boxing events in Paris this summer were instead run independently by the IOC. A growing number of national boxing federations have consequently cut ties with the IBA, including England Boxing and USA Boxing, with many instead throwing their weight behind a new chief boxing body called World Boxing run by former IBA president candidate Boris van der Vorst.
The IBA has consistently thrown blows at both World Boxing and the IOC which intensified further this summer when IBA President Umar Kremelev, released a video calling Bach “evil” for his role in the current Olympic gender controversy and called World Boxing “unfit” to represent boxers.
On Thursday, Bach repeated that the IBA will have no involvement in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics and for now, the IOC has not included the sport in the LA 2028 program. Bach urged national boxing federations to work together and find a solution or risk missing out on boxing being involved in the next Olympics.
World Boxing, set up in 2023, now has 55 member federations across five continents and has been keenly seeking IOC recognition as boxing’s new international federation. In May the two held their first formal meeting signalling the potential start of a formal collaboration and offering hope for boxing’s Olympic future. Bach, having previously hinted at World Boxing’s suitability, said that for now, it is the only body that could potentially be able to replace the IBA.
“We are watching this and when the time comes then we have to make, like for any recognition or provisional recognition of any international federation, we have to make an assessment whether there is a federation,” said Bach. “At this moment it looks like the only it could be is World Boxing [and] whether they are meeting the criteria which we have for such a situation. It cannot be the IBA. This story is over for all the reasons, the governance and ethical reasons you know.”
A decision will be made in early 2025, according to the IOC.
