The decision from International Boxing Association (AIBA) has been made based on two statistical reviews by its Medical Commission, where more than 2,000 bouts were reviewed, and a study by an independent physician-researcher in a recent publication in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, where nearly 30,000 bouts have been analysed over the past 59 years.

The AIBA data was presented at a joint meeting of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Medical Commission and the International Federation Medical Commission Chairmen.

All available data indicated that the removal of headguards in elite men's competition would actually result in a decreased number of concussions and therefore the AIBA Medical Commission voted unanimously to support the removal of headguard as a safety measure.

The 2013 AIBA World Boxing Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan, will now be the first major international event where this new rule applies, while the Rio 2016 Olympic Games will now see male boxers fight without headguards, although they will remain in place for both female and junior fighters.

In addition to the removal of headguards there was the announcement of a new scoring system.

The new system will be based on the Ten Point Must-System with five judges around the ring.

Out of these five judges, only the scores of three of them, which will be randomly drawn by a computer, will be taken into account.

Nobody will know until the end of the bout which judges' scores will have been considered.

In addition, scores will only be revealed at the end of each bout in a move to make the sport more transparent.

"It is AIBA's duty to bring the sport of boxing to the pinnacle of the Olympic Movement and I am convinced that these changes will critically contribute to the development of our beloved sport," said AIBA President CK Wu.

"Decisions have not been made lightly and we will now put a lot of efforts in educating our National Member Federations, our officials, boxers and coaches, as well as boxing fans around the world."

The new rules will be applicable for all three AIBA major competition programmes which are AIBA Open Boxing (AOB), the World Series of Boxing (WSB) and AIBA Pro Boxing (APB).

The WSB has never seen headguards used since it was first launched in 2010 while the APB will be launched at the end of the year, with the full APB Competition Rules to be announced in the coming months.

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