Hickey turns pro and targets world titles

Sam Hickey won gold at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham

Sam Hickey believes he can "fight for world titles and win them" after turning professional.

The 24-year-old, who won a middleweight gold medal for Scotland at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, hopes to make his debut this autumn after an impressive amateur career.

"I think if you are going into the pros with the background I have got and what I have done in the amateurs, I should be trying to go all the way," Hickey told BBC Scotland. "So I am going to set high standards.

His hopes of signing off from the amateur game at this summer's Olympics in Paris, though, were dashed after his weight category was removed from the programme.

Hickey attempted to step up to light heavyweight, but the Dundee-born fighter admits it "tested me a wee bit" and he missed out on selection for Team GB.

"It just put me at a disadvantage," he added. "But I was always going to go for it and try it because, if I didn't and turned pro after the Commonwealth Games, I would be watching the Olympic Games and watching the guys at light heavyweight and thinking I would have been there. So I left no stone unturned over it."

Hickey thinks the decision to drop middleweight from the programme was not only "bad for me" but for Olympic boxing.

"They are losing a boxer to it, not because the boxer is not good enough but because the weights have been changed," he said. "So it is both sides, it is a pain.

"At middleweight, I was on a roll. I definitely would have put myself up there for being one of the boxers to qualify. I think most people know I would have as well.

"Loads of guys who I have boxed - and a couple who I have beaten - are going to the Olympics."

Hickey, named male boxer of the last Commonwealth Games, won European bronze in the same year, making him the most decorated Scottish boxer at that level.

"If I stay super fit and I have the right people around me, I can definitely go on and fight for world titles and win them," he added.

"British, European, world - whatever path you go on. I want to get to the top eventually and the middleweight division is kind of open at the moment domestically."