If you don't get your hopes up, you won't be disappointed either.

The International Boxing Association (IBA) delivered a sports-political farce with its extraordinary general meeting in Yerevan at the weekend.

That was expectable.

But expectations are not hopes - and nobody really had to hope for anything other than a farce, a serious event for example.

The IBA has not only been a zombie of international sport since this weekend, an undead association that is haunting the world thanks to Russian money.

As a reminder: the IBA has been deprived of recognition by the International Olympic Committee for a good three years, the Olympic boxing tournament in Tokyo last year was organized by the IOC, this is also planned for Paris 2024, and in 2028 there is a risk of it becoming an Olympic sport.

In the world association, once called AIBA, corruption has been a key leitmotif for decades. The Uzbek Gafur Rachimov, who was known as a mafia godfather, was succeeded by the Russian Umar Kremlev as president and with him the sponsor millions of Gazprom.

One of "Putin's motorcycle rockers"

Kremlev was a member of the Night Wolves, also known as "Putin's Motorbike Rockers".

Earlier this month, Kremlev opened a boxing center in Moscow together with the Russian President.

So who should be surprised that on Friday, under Kremlev's leadership, the Ukrainian boxing association was expelled as a kind of amuse-gueule for the funeral feast in Yerevan?

The IOC is now also “extremely concerned” about this, as well as about the course of the other program items.

It will be addressed at the next IOC Executive meeting.

Kremlev was only forced to attend the event in Yerevan because his re-election in Istanbul in the spring was tainted with the fact that he had the opposing candidate Boris van der Vorst expelled from the Netherlands.

Van der Vorst called the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and was right there.

So Kremlev had to let his followers show up again.

In Armenia's capital, almost 75 percent of the delegates decided that re-election was not necessary.

It is clear that the Russian understanding of democracy does not need to be imposed on international boxing officials with the same degree of violence as it has on Ukrainians who are being forced to join Putin's empire in Kherson, Zaporizhia and elsewhere.

Van der Vorst and his supporters left the event in protest, the Dutchman then told the Inside the Games portal that he would also fight for an Olympic boxing future outside of the IBA.

An answer to the question of why this has to be the case, why someone like Kremlev stays in while someone like van der Vorst now has to see how something like an Olympic perspective can be shaped in a sport that is popular across the globe, last but not least, the IOC delivers.

This did not and did not exclude the functionaries from Putin's empire even after his war of aggression against Ukraine.

Without Olympic recognition, such an exclusion would have been theoretically irrelevant for the time being for the IBA.

But: "We have never recommended the exclusion of Russian incumbents," said IOC sports director Kit McConnell just a few days ago.

Boxing officials aren't the only ones who have a vital feeling for the message that's being sent from Lausanne.