Explained: Can Nishant Dev compete in Olympics after turning professional?

Indian boxer and Olympian Nishant Dev announced his decision to go professional on Friday. He is slated to make his professional boxing debut later this month.

"I'm very excited to be joining Matchroom and beginning my professional career in Las Vegas on January 25," Nishant said in an Instagram post.

What does going professional mean?

To understand this, one needs to go back to the basics.

There are two types of boxing – Amateur and Professional – and they are vastly different from each other. How?

Amateur boxing, as the name suggests is how all pugilists start their careers. It forms an athlete's base in sport before they turn professional.

Amateur boxing is what you see at multi-sport events like the Olympics, Asian Games, Commonwealth Games, and others.

It uses a point-based system where the focus is on clean punches, tactics, and technicalities. Besides, in amateur boxing headgear and large gloves are mandatory to help minimize any serious injury concerns.

Professional boxing, meanwhile, is the exact opposite of that.

In Professional boxing, the scoring is more arbitrary. This means there is an increased focus on knockouts. Factors like power and aggression play a more important role.

Professional boxers also do not wear any protective headgear. Instead, they only use mouthguards and much smaller gloves during bouts to help them get more power into punches.

Moreover, the amateur boxing ring is comparatively smaller than in professional boxing. The number and duration of rounds in a match are also lesser in amateur boxing.

Professional boxers are also paid money for each bout they fight and win, whereas no such arrangement exists in amateur boxing, where the focus is on winning medals at events like the Olympics or World Championships.

Nishant, a world championship bronze medallist and one of India's brightest talents in the sport, will leave this world of amateur boxing and compete professionally from now on.

Turning professional is usually considered an upward career move in boxing. That's where the best boxers in the world fight.

Iishant is not the first Indian to go professional in boxing. The 2008 Olympics bronze medallist Vijender Singh turned professional in 2015.

Even before Singh, Neeraj Goyat had turned professional in 2013 – just a year after he failed to qualify for the 2012 London Olympic Games.

Can Nishant compete at the Olympics?

To put it simply, yes. Nishant can continue competing at the Olympics, provided boxing makes it to the roster of the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

Earlier, the International Olympic Committee did not allow professional boxers to compete at the quadrennial games, keeping in mind the safety concerns for amateur boxers.

But that rule has been long changed.

The IOC allowed professional boxers to come in and compete at the Olympics for the first time at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games. Italy's Carmine Tommasone was the first professional boxer to compete at the Olympics.

Even India's Goyat had competed in the Olympic Qualifiers ahead of the 2016 Rio Games.

So yes, Indian fans can still see Nishant at the multi-sporting event, if he wishes to participate.

But as Nishant's post read, "My goal is to become India's first-ever professional boxing champion."