There’s not many people who, on first glance, guess that Niamh Mitchell is a boxer.
It takes even more effort to convince people that she’s a good boxer.
And just occasionally, she needs to prove with her hands quite how talented a fighter she is.
“Every week I get guys thinking they’re better fighters than me,” Mitchell says.
“It's so annoying.
“They'll say to me ‘but I weight 70 kilos and I could hit hard' and I'll be thinking but you don't actually know how to punch so you won't be able to hit harder than me.
“There was one time when I was out with my friends, there was a guy saying that exact thing about me being a female boxer - he was like if you punch me in the stomach, it won't hurt.
“So I punched him in the stomach and he was floored. He never said anything to me again.”
Mitchell is not not just any boxer - she’s the brightest young female talent that Scottish boxing has ever seen.
But she likes the contrast that she’s developed of being a ruthless fighter inside the ring but, as she puts it, a “girly girl” outside of it.
It’s a balance that, she believes, has enabled her to achieve such considerable success despite her young age.
19-year-old Mitchell has already made history - in 2022, she became Scotland’s first-ever female European Junior champion and, since then, has added a British title to her name and become this country’s first senior female international gold medallist at a tournament in Hungary.
Read more: Laura Muir: Glasgow 2026 feels like the Olympics to me
Sarah Adlington chasing history but remaining philosophical as retirement closes in
But even with these accolades under her belt, almost everyone she meets is aghast at the career path she’s chosen.
“I’ve never said to someone that I'm a boxer and they've not reacted like ‘no way, that's crazy',” she laughs.
“It's because I'm girly that they just don't get it and even when I do explain it to them, they often think I box just at club level - they don't understand that I'm training twice a day, getting in that ring and getting done-in.
“It's about getting that balance because you need that - I can't be 24-7 in the boxing ring because that would drain you so I need time to shut off from that and my time off is dressing myself up and going out with my friends or my family. It’s about getting a happy medium.”
Mitchell is, she admits, delighted to do her small part in changing perceptions of female fighters in a sport that’s notoriously brutish. And she’s keen to prove to her fellow females who may be considering venturing into a boxing gym that you can be both feminine and a successful fighter.
“It's nice to show young girls that you can have two sides to you,” the teenager from Cardenden says.
“When I was younger, I looked at some women boxers and it felt like they had massive muscles, no makeup on and never have their hair down and that always put me off. I remember saying to my dad I don't want big muscles.
“Obviously I'm toned now but it's not like I'm a big unit so it would be nice for young girls to see me and realise that you can be a girly girl and be a boxer because I didn't see that too much when I was younger.
“At my gym, I'm the only (top-level) female fighter and so I like to make every girl and woman who comes into my gym feel comfortable.”
Mitchell is spearheading Scotland’s 11-strong boxing squad for Glasgow 2026. The six men and five women are aiming to continue Scotland’s proud tradition of winning a medal at every Commonwealth Games and Mitchell is both hopeful and confident that she will be one of the fighters who box their way onto the podium in Glasgow.
Given the meteoric rise in standard of women’s boxing across the globe over the past decade, getting her hands on silverware, and once again making history by becoming Scotland’s first-ever female Commonwealth Games boxing medallist will, the teenager knows, be no easy feat. But despite the difficulty of the task, it’s the target she’s set for herself.
“The level that female boxing is at now is insane,” she says.
“When you go to these international tournaments you see how good the other girls are, the standard now is just crazy.
“And so a medal in Glasgow would mean everything. I made history with my European medal so it would be really nice to do it again with a Commonwealth Games medal.”
