World Boxing, a new Federation emerges in the midst of the conflict between the IBA and the IOC

In the midst of the conflict between the International Boxing Federation (IBA) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), a new Federation emerges with the objective of saving the place of boxing in the Olympic Games, a sport that has so far not been included in the Los Angeles 2028 program.

World Boxing is the name of the Federation and is initially made up of representatives from the United States, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand and the Philippines. The president will be announced in November, when the elections take place.

The headquarters of World Boxing will be in Lausanne (Switzerland) and the Federation will be composed of officials such as Tyson Lee (president of USA Boxing) and Matthew Holt (executive director of GB Boxing), while the athletes will be represented on the Board by six athletes, including the British Lauren Price and the American Richard Torrez Jr, Olympic medalists in Tokyo.

World Boxing reported that it arises as a result of the “persistent problems” surrounding the International Boxing Association (IBA), which was suspended in 2019 and from which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) took the organization out of the qualification for Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024.

Boxing today has no place in Los Angeles 2028 and in search of keeping sport in the Olympic program, this new Federation was born, which until now has not maintained contacts with the IOC and from which it must ask for recognition as a new body, something that could take up to two years.

The birth of World Boxing comes with the promise that it will “keep boxing at the heart of the Olympic movement” and he also says in a statement that “it will ensure that the interests of boxers come first”.

The membership period to join this recent Federation will begin in May and World Boxing announced that “many national bodies have already indicated their interest”, while Matthew Holt, executive director of GB Boxing, said that “it is vital that boxing continues to be at the heart of the Olympic movement and to achieve this we need to re-establish a relationship of trust between those who govern the sport and everyone.”

“World Boxing aims to achieve this by creating a financially transparent organization with strong governance structures that provide sporting integrity and fair competition and act in the interest of boxers and sports,” said the British official and boxer Lauren Price, one of the six athletes who will make up the Board. “Going to the Olympic Games changes life and I can’t imagine a Game without boxing.”

Financial irregularities and the investigation into manipulated fights at the Rio 2016 Games led the International Olympic Committee to suspend the International Boxing Federation in 2019, and deprived it of the possibility of organizing qualification events for the Tokyo and Paris Olympic Games.

IBA, chaired by the Russian Umar Kremlev and with the financial support of the state gas company Gazprom, decided to establish its own qualification system for the Paris Games and thus opened another round of dispute with the IOC.

In addition, the International Federation allowed Russian and Belarusian female boxers to participate in the recent World Cup in India and provoked the boycott of more than 10 countries, including the United States and Great Britain, whose officials were described by Kremlev as “worse than hyenas and jackals”.

The last point of conflict between IBA and IOC was due to the next European Games that will be held in Poland (in Krakow-Maopolska from June 21 to July 2) and are part of the qualification system for Paris 2024, a competition in which boxers from Russia and Belarus will not be able to participate as part of the sanctions for the invasion of Ukraine, in February of last year.

“The 2023 European Games cannot continue to be a qualifier recognized by the IOC for Paris 2024 and must be annulled to counter the discriminatory actions taken by the European Olympic Committees against the recommendations made at the last meeting of the IOC Executive Committee. The approach that the athlete comes first must prevail and there must be no room for politics in our sport, and the IBA demonstrates this with its actions,” IBA said in a statement.

In the midst of all these conflicts and with the intention of keeping boxing within the Olympic Games, World Boxing was born and launches another round of a fight that will surely deliver more rounds...