Boxing, which has been plagued by rumors of an Olympic withdrawal for years, will also become an official sport at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. According to the Associated Press and Reuters, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved the proposal to make boxing an official sport of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics at an executive committee meeting held in Costa Navarino, Greece on the 17th local time.

Bach delivered his opening remarks at the Executive Board meeting in Costa Navarino, Greece, on March 17 (local time).

The Associated Press reported that the final decision will be made at the IOC General Assembly on the 20th, but this is only a process to posthumously endorse the executive committee's decision, and the fact that boxing will remain at the Olympics has already been determined.

Prior to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, the International Boxing Federation (IBA), which oversees the Olympic boxing event, suffered overall losses due to a bias verdict controversy and financial difficulties, and the IOC has excluded the IBA from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and is directly in charge of boxing. It is reported that the results of an analysis of the boxing scoring system of the Rio Olympics by an independent investigative agency show that as many as 11 matches were systematically manipulated.

The IOC is also in charge of boxing at Paris 2024. The IOC withdrew its approval of the IBA in June 2023 after failing to reform the IBA in a number of disciplines, including its governance structure, finances and ethics.

The IOC said boxing would be excluded from the official programme at Los Angeles 2028 if new international federations could not be established to replace the IBA by 2025. In response, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries, which were worried about the withdrawal of boxing from the Olympics, withdrew from the IBA and formed a new international organization, the World Boxing Federation (WB).

Reuters reported that more than 80 countries and regions have joined the WB. South Korea also withdrew from the IBA last year to join the WB, as did world-class Olympic boxing powerhouses such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

The IOC, which has been working on the WB, last month recognized the WB as the temporary international body that runs the Olympic boxing program. The IOC said that until the start of the boxing qualifiers for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, only members of the various federations that joined the WB will be able to participate in the Olympics.

At a press conference on the same day, Kit McConnell, director of the IOC athletic bureau, replied, "It was about two years before the Olympics," when asked when national associations would join the WB to participate in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. In addition, on the 20th of this month, the IOC General Assembly will elect a new IOC president to succeed President Bach.