International Olympic Committee Recommends Including Boxing In 2028 Olympics

World Boxing is in place to run the sport in the Los Angeles Olympics.

Boxing is expected to be part of the next Summer Olympics after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) during its next session in Greece this week.

According to Reuters, after the IOC granted provisional recognition to World Boxing in February, the IOC approved including the sport when the Olympic games head to Los Angeles in 2028.

In the initial planning, the sport was not included.

“I am confident the session will approve it,” IOC President Thomas Bach said at a recent press conference.

Although it was included in the 2024 Paris Olympics, it was organized by the IOC after the organization refused the International Boxing Association (IBA) from running due to its failure to implement reforms on the governance and finance of the sport.

The IOC encouraged national boxing federations to create a new global body, which led to the creation of World Boxing. The new body, launched in 2023, has more than 80 national federations as members.

“This is a very significant and important decision for Olympic boxing and takes the sport one step closer to being restored to the Olympic program,” Boris van der Vorst, president of World Boxing, said in a written statement.

“I have no doubt it will be very positively received by everyone connected with boxing, at every level throughout the world, who understands the critical importance to the future of the sport of boxing continuing to remain a part of the Olympic Movement.”

The IOC, Reuters reported, said only athletes whose national federations were members of World Boxing by the time of the start of the qualification events for the 2028 Olympics could take part in Los Angeles.

“Somewhere between two years before the Games,” IOC Sports Director Kit McConnell said when asked by what time national federations needed to join World Boxing for their athletes to be for boxing’s return.

Previously the IBA ran the sport’s events at the Olympics before being stripped of overseeing matches for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. The IOC suspended the IBA, which Russian businessman Umar Kremlev runs, in 2019 over governance, finance, refereeing, and ethical issues.