Missing out on a medal at the 2021 Games left Skye Nicolson devastated. But she has channelled that pain into a professional world title.
Skye Nicolson finished her Tokyo 2021 campaign sobbing, narrowly beaten to Australia’s first Olympic boxing medal since 1988 and gutted to the point that her new status as her country’s most successful female boxer “means nothing”.
At the time, Nicolson planned to capitalise on a 2016 rule change that allowed professional boxers to contest the Olympics where they had previously been prohibited. But then she learnt what it actually meant to transition from amateur to pro. That fights would now be 10 rounds instead of three, and preparation would be a gruelling 12-week camp for a single match instead of competing and weighing in on back-to-back days.
“I was one or two fights away from becoming mandatory for Amanda Serrano to be fighting for world titles, and it would’ve meant putting all of that on hold for another year to a year and a half again.“I was on the fence for months, but I just felt like, if I don’t want to jump out of bed every morning to chase the Olympic gold medal, it’s never going to happen anyway.”
“I was all about just the straight-playing red and blue kits,” she said. “There was no walkout song or music, none of this showbiz stuff; there’s no telling your opponent what you’re going to do to them and stuff like that.
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