NICOLA ADAMS’S world title dream is being driven by a desire to pay tribute to her mother and her trainers past and present, she said today.

The double Olympic champion will challenge for a full or interim title at the Leicester Arena on October 6 in only her fifth professional fight and hopes success will ease the pain suffered during a troubling period for those around her.

Adams recently relocated from San Francisco, where she had been training with the respected Virgil Hunter, to Sheffield, where she is working under Dominic Ingle.

Her return to Britain also brings her closer to her mother Dee, who was diagnosed last year with breast cancer and who, after concluding radiotherapy, is according to Adams “getting on really well.”

Adams’s move to the Ingle Gym — forced upon her by Hunter’s struggles with illness — came shortly after the death of Dominic’s father Brendan, whose passing was felt throughout British boxing after years as one of its most-loved figures.

Now the 35-year-old is hoping victory in Leicester can provide a lift for her mum.

“Now would be the perfect time to win the world title for her,” she said.

“She told me not to put my career on the back burner for her. She told me just to go for it.

“That’s what I’m doing now, so to get this would just be a dream come true. Being closer to mum was also part of the reason for me coming back to England permanently.

“She’s getting on really well now. She’s finished the radiotherapy, so she’s doing good.

“It was unfortunate that Virgil Hunter got sick, that’s why I had to come back. All I was really told was he was quite ill. He’s diabetic and it was to do with that.

“It was June, just after [Brendan died]. It was horrible. He was such a nice guy. I remember when I came to the gym when I was younger and he just welcomed me with open arms. He was so funny. If you were ever shy or lacking in confidence, he’d get you up in the ring, get you shadow boxing, singing a song. Everybody’s missing him.

“I’d love to be able to [win a world title for them]. That is a tribute.”

The Ingle Gym, where WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders and the talented Kid Galahad are among the leading fighters, is again thriving and Adams has even sparred her male counterparts.

“Just body sparring,” she says. “It would be a bit brutal otherwise. They have to hold back a bit because they’re bigger than me, but I still get the timing and the little moves. But I’m allowed to go as hard as I want with them.

“[Saunders has] changed his mind [from negative views on women’s boxing] now I’m in the gym. Everybody has now they’ve seen what we’re actually like in the ring. That’s what I like to do most — change people’s minds and perceptions.”