The sport loved by millions has disappeared from the Olympic Games programme: there is still a chance to return

This is more of a sex scandal in Paris boxing.

The IOC does not currently include boxing in the Los Angeles program.

President of the IOC Thomas Bach he indicated that boxing could still return, but a decision must be made by 2025.

“Within the next year and as soon as possible.” We can’t wait until the end of next year”, said Th. Bach when asked when the future of boxing will finally be decided.

Th pointed out. Bach, unlike the Tokyo and Paris Games, the organization will no longer hold boxing competitions.

Until then, the International Boxing Association (IBA) was responsible for boxing at the Olympic Games. The IBA was suspended by the Olympic Committee back in 2019 due to serious administrative, financial, refereeing and ethical violations. The Kremlin-linked IBA, whose head Umar Kremlev is a friend of Vladimir Putin, has long been mired in scandals.

In 2023, the IOC announced that they no longer recognized the organization and began raising questions about the IBA’s prize money.

“As usual with the IBA, it is not clear where the money came from. One of the main reasons the IOC no longer recognizes the IBA is a complete lack of financial transparency. The IBA was not ready to clearly explain its sources of funding and its financial dependence on, at the time, the same company,”Gazprom“, the IOC said in a statement in May.

In 2023, a new organization, the World Boxing Association, was formed. There are currently 37 members. The latter group has not yet been recognized by the IOC.

The IOC said that for boxing to return to the Olympic Games, it needed a reliable organization: “Olympic boxing must be organized by a reliable international organization with proper management. It goes without saying that any boxer whose national affiliation is with the IBA cannot compete in the Olympic competitions. The National Olympic Committees of each country must remove national boxing federations affiliated to IBA from their membership list.”

The conflict between the IOC and the IBA increased further at the Paris Games. With the Games already underway, the IBA announced the expulsion of two athletes – Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting – from last year’s world championships after for them to say that they underwent gender tests which showed that they had a male chromosome. U.Kremlev also released this information, but so far there is no evidence that it is true.

The Algerian and Taiwanese boxing federations threatened legal action over these claims, while the IOC called the claims an attempt to block the Olympic boxing competition, which was organized by the International Olympic Committee itself.

Boxing at the Olympic Games since 1904. Boxing was only absent at the 1912 Olympic Games, as this sport was banned by Swedish law at the time.

Olympic boxing winners include Roy Jones Jr., Lennox Lewis, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Joe Razier, George Foreman, Anthony Joshua, and Muhammad Ali.