A desperate proposal to become International Boxing Association (AIBA) Honorary President was then shot down in flames just days later, with a total of zero votes cast in favour of Wu taking on the position.

While Wu drops back to the backbenches of the IOC for now, his replacement at ASOIF has continued his rather steady and impressive rise.

In the past five of years, Nenad Lalovic has taken charge of a Summer Olympic Federation, joined the World Anti-Doping Agency Foundation Board, become an IOC member and now moved into a position on its Executive Board.

It has been a strong couple of years for a man who was parachuted in to perform a rescue act when wrestling was removed from the Olympic programme back in 2013. At first entrusted with the role on an interim basis, Lalovic set about making swift changes to ultimately succeed in the aim of restoring wrestling place. He has proved politically savvy, backing the IOC’s move to recognise Kosovo, despite opposition back home in Serbia.

Lalovic has clearly got the trust of the right people in the Olympic Movement. And with each position earned, he has become a more prominent figure and in turn, wrestling’s place on the Olympic programme has greatly been bolstered.

In simple terms, you could argue that Lalovic was exactly the right man for the sport of wrestling at the time.

There appears a similarity in the situation he inherited in wrestling, to the one that Wu has left behind for boxing, with the sport facing uncertainty over its Olympic future.

You could argue that for boxing, the sport may have been the wrong appointment at the worst possible time.

Gafur Rakhimov was yesterday confirmed as AIBA’s Interim President until their next Congress in November, following the decision of Franco Falcinelli to step down for "family reasons".

Rakhimov has repeatedly been named as an Uzbek mafia boss in the media with strong links to organised crime, although he has never been prosecuted of anything. Last month, however, he was among 10 individuals announced they were imposing sanctions on because they were allegedly associated with the alleged Eurasian criminal entity, the Thieves-in-Law.

His alleged mafia links saw him banned from entering Australia to attend the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, but has been the President of the Asian Boxing Confederation and vice-president of AIBA for 15 years.

AIBA have defended the appointment, insisting he had moved into the position in line with their statutes, given that he was the longest serving vice-president when Falcinelli stepped aside. They have also claimed that Rakhimov has had a positive impact on the sport of boxing.

I do not dispute either of their positions, but the appointment seems naïve at best. It surprises me that AIBA are surprised Rakhimov’s move into such a key role has caused controversy. 

What did they think would happen?

At a time when AIBA are fully under the microscope of the IOC, it would seem unwise to put themselves in further difficulty. Surely the AIBA Executive Committee could have begged Falcinelli to stay on for 10 months to get them through to the Congress or perhaps let Rakhimov turn down the position to avoid potential controversy.

As it is, headlines have generally featured the words "Olympic boxing" and "links to organised crime". It is hardly surprising the IOC have stated they are "extremely worried" about the governance of AIBA.

"The IOC Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer will give a report to the IOC Executive Board Meeting this upcoming week in Pyeongchang," an IOC spokesperson said today. "The IOC EB will then decide on further measures following up on its decision of 6 December 2017. Last year, the IOC EB had identified several specific requirements to be met by AIBA, particularly in the areas of governance, financial matters, anti-doping, judging and refereeing. AIBA was expected to take actions to address these issues.

"Until the required actions have been fully addressed by the Federation, the IOC had decided to withhold any future financial contributions to AIBA with immediate effect. In all its decisions the IOC will respect the interest of the athletes from AIBA."

If the IOC were forced into a snap decision tomorrow on which sport to remove from the Olympic programme, boxing would almost certainly be the one they would choose. When the IOC boosted the number of women’s weight divisions to five at Tokyo 2020, they opted to remove two men’s categories rather than merely add the women’s. The IOC were in many people’s eyes, turning their thumb down towards AIBA in disapproval, with the change a warning that they need to shape up.

The only other International Federation to suffer a similar fate was weightlifting, who have been battling through problems of their own.

Boxing was widely criticised during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, with a series of bouts causing consternation among fans and boxers themselves, due to controversial decisions made by judges. Major concerns over AIBA’s finances and the coup on Wu last year, which saw the organisation plunged into civil war, have damaged boxing’s position further.

The repeated issues make Falcinelli's outrage at boxing's uncertain place on the Olympic programme, difficult to understand. 

"This recurring threat to exclude boxing from the Olympic programme offends our glorious Olympic history, our tradition of a popular sport spread all over the around the world," he said yesterday, prior to a standing ovation.

It is not as though AIBA appear to have made strides forward in governance.

Looking back to 2006 when Pakistan's Anwar Chowdhry was disposed as President, the IOC had halted payments to AIBA over concerns about judging standards. Claims of financial irregularities and the President treating the organisation as his "private property" were also made. They are near enough, the same allegations made against Wu at the AIBA Congress yesterday. It presents a picture of an International Federation that have not learnt lessons from the past.

It would be perfectly understandable for the IOC to have lost patience with AIBA.

With AIBA now claiming to be embarking on a new era, the fact that their Interim President is accused of having links to organised crime, his speech vowing to bring in greater "transparency and integrity" was baffling. It does not seem a great place to start from.

Particularly when there were a couple of IOC officials sat in the Congress, like a head of year at school being sat at the back of a notoriously troublesome class, taking notes for when they report back to their superiors.

They would surely have been unimpressed at some of the comments made during the "Honorary Presidency Nomination" in yesterday’s agenda, which a delegate had conveniently asked to take place after the AIBA Executive Committee report, which was almost solely dedicated to allegations against Wu. Funnily enough, several attendees thought this may have been pre-planned.

It, therefore, came as no surprise when the Honorary Presidency vote for Wu was dubbed "absurd" and an "abomination" by two delegates. One went as far as saying he should be "in jail", with another taking a further extreme by stating "should he even be called a person".

While it did become a session dedicated to bashing one man, the AIBA Executive Committee made several very fair points yesterday.

It seems clear that while a number quietly praise Wu for cleaning up a good deal of the corruption in the organisation after Chowdry’s tenure, there appear several major areas which showed his time was up. Frankly, from the moment the AIBA Executive Committee rebelled last year, he was a man on the ropes, with the Olympic Movement eventually cutting him loose. Quietly, though, there were already concerns about who would fill the void in boxing that was being created. 

Statements that AIBA have a mere CHF 4 million in their bank account would certainly be placed at Wu’s door, while the Executive Committee seem fairly justified in asking questions such as "how did the AIBA director of communications ultimately become the executive director?"

Equally, the AIBA Executive Committee should shoulder some of the blame for the situation. If, as the now former Interim President Franco Falcinelli said yesterday there were "11 years of failed leadership", it does make you wonder what the Executive Committee were doing during this period. Yes, they have acted in the last year, but they would have been among those to have given Wu standing ovations at previous Congresses.

To their credit, the Executive Committee did announce plans to reintroduce video appeals to boost the fairness of competitions, as well as reaching a series of agreements to halt contracts that it is claimed would risk the financial future of AIBA.

A series of statute changes to reduce the power of the President were also approved yesterday, due to last year’s crisis. A governance review by Burson-Marsteller Sport will take place over the coming months to recommend further changes aimed at modernising the governing body.

It is interesting to note that they were involved in developing the strategic plan created for the then International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles to help the sport in its hour of need.

The challenge they would have in this instance is that the Interim President is more likely to be continually hampered by negative issues surrounding his integrity.

Rather than sending out a message to the Olympic Movement and beyond yesterday that AIBA are getting back on its feet, Rakhimov’s ascent to the top role managed to take all focus and instead added to the existing concerns surrounding the organisation.

Not exactly boxing clever.