Cindy Ngamba: ‘I don’t want to go to Saudi until I hear from women that laws have changed’

Cindy Ngamba, the Olympic boxing bronze medallist who competed as a refugee in Paris and is now a professional. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

“I’m still deciding my nickname,” Cindy Ngamba says with a languid grin as she prepares for her debut as a professional fighter at the Royal Albert Hall on Friday night. Ngamba, who won the first Olympic medal in history for the Refugee Team at the Paris Games last year, is a sparkling personality and a boxer of vast potential, so it does not take her long to reveal her current favourite.

“On my gumshield it says ‘One in 100 Million’ so that’s a nickname I like,” Ngamba says. “It’s linked to the Refugee Team because I am just one in a 100 million refugees from around the world.”