A 2021 investigation by Professor Richard McLaren, who was appointed by the International Boxing Association (AIBA) to look into irregularities in Boxing at the 2016 Rio Olympics, found that AIBA officials selected boxing referees and judges so that the Olympic qualifying and the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games could be manipulated. The report suggested senior officials influenced who would win by selecting biased judges and potentially briefing them on desired outcomes. At least 11 fights were believed to be fixed, including medal matches. This tainted the entire competition and the reputations of boxers who won questionable decisions. The investigation also revealed that the 2012 London Olympics might have also been affected by the same corruption. On this topic, former world champion Gennady Golovkin has shed light on how these things are being eradicated from the Olympics using technology ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

After his final bout against Canelo Alvarez in 2022, ‘GGG’ never officially retired from the sport, but in February this year, the members of Kazakhstan’s Olympic Committee voted unanimously for Golovkin to succeed businessman Timur Kulibayev as the President of the National Olympic Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Fast forward to today, the former world champion appeared in an interview with well-respected boxing journalist Kevin Iole on his YouTube channel, where he spoke about technology being used in the Olympics to weed out match-fixing.

Gennady Golovkin reveals judges will be held accountable 

Speaking to the ‘Kazakh Thunder,’ Iole highlighted the older system of counting punches, which required three judges to push a button within half a second of each other for a landed punch to be counted, a method that, he noted, has lost popularity among people. He then inquired of the head of Kazakhstan’s Olympic Committee how the new system, set to be implemented in the Paris Olympics, differs from the previous version.

In response, Golovkin suggested breaking down the entire system could be difficult, but said, “I should point out that the [random] selection of judges by computer is very important.” He emphasized that the new system utilizes computerized processes that are tasked with choosing who would fight who, and doesn’t have any human intervention. Interestingly, even the judges are under severe surveillance. As ‘GGG’ explained, “If like three judges pressing the button 20 times and one judge pressed it 50 or 60 times; he has to justify it.”

Golovkin further added, “In Italy, I already saw that it’s being analyzed. It’s being looked into, in order to make it clean and make it fair.” However, the question is, how did corruption and match-fixing survive inside AIBA for all these years?

AIBA promoted a culture of fear, intimidation, and obedience

It’s worth noting that the officials present in the 2016 Olympics weren’t part of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. In fact, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was in charge of the Olympic games, expressing concerns about how AIBA did things. Regardless, after his investigation, McLaren said, “Key personnel decided that the rules did not apply to them,” adding there was a “culture of fear, intimidation and obedience in the ranks of the referees and judges.”

The investigation found about 11 or fewer fights, which were problematic and suspicious—it included bouts for medals. Blaming the AIBA officials who handpicked referees and judges, McLaren said that the informal structure allowed “complicit and compliant referees and judges” to be assigned to specific fights to manipulate them. McLaren suggested the chosen referees either knew about or weren’t competent enough to understand the manipulation. McLaren’s report also alleged that the qualifying events were used to weed out honest referees and judges.

Richard McLaren’s report wasn’t able to figure out who was at the helm of the match-fixing scheme, and the selection of winners. However, if Gennady Golovkin is right about the new system, such instances will never happen again in the Olympics. What do you think about the new system ‘GGG’ described?