Boxers from Russia, Belarus to be allowed to fight as neutral athletes in World Boxing competitions

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Boxers from Russia and Belarus will be allowed to compete as neutral athletes by the new governing body recently put in charge of Olympic boxing competitions.

World Boxing announced its decision Tuesday to treat Russian and Belarussian boxers as neutral athletes, emulating the approach usually taken by the International Olympic Committee since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Fighters and support personnel from Russia and Belarus will not be allowed to participate in World Boxing events with flags, uniforms or national anthems. They also must be approved in a vetting process to ensure they have not supported the war in Ukraine or have any links to the Russian army.

World Boxing was formed in 2023 as an alternative to the International Boxing Association, which received the unprecedented punishment of being permanently banned from the Olympic movement that year. The IOC had lost patience with the IBA after years of governance problems and financial misdeeds compounded by the organization's endemic ties to Russia following its election of president Umar Kremlev in 2020.

The IBA largely ignored the strictures against Russian and Belarussian athletes across sport in recent years, allowing them to compete with their national flags and symbols starting in 2023.

World Boxing was given provisional recognition in February 2025 by the IOC, which ran the Olympic boxing tournaments in Tokyo and Paris following the banishment of the IBA. One month later, boxing was formally confirmed as part of the program for the Los Angeles Olympics after months of uncertainty because of its precarious state of governance.

World Boxing has gradually accumulated membership from almost every nation — and it even added federations from Russia and Belarus last month. Ukraine's federation joined the organization last year.

Gennadiy Golovkin, the former middleweight world champion who won an Olympic silver medal for Kazakhstan in 2004, was chosen as World Boxing's president last year.

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AP boxing: https://apnews.com/boxing