On Saturday night, Ishmael Davis will fight for the fifth time in 14 months on an evening that will mark what he is calling "the end of the beginning".

There have been few top-level boxers as active as the 30-year-old from Leeds, England, over the same spell, but things have not gone exactly to plan.

He arrives at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to face Sam Gilley off the back of a six-round decision victory over an Italian southpaw called Elliot Eboigbe (1-16, 1 KO) during a low-key outing in a banqueting suite last month.

But before that he was on a run of three successive defeats in 12-round contests, although there were extenuating circumstances given his propensity to step in at the last minute to take fights, as he did when losing to both Serhii Bohachuk and Josh Kelly late last year.

Now, as he prepares to face Gilley for the British and Commonwealth junior middleweight titles, Davis (14-3, 6 KOs) admits the pressure is on. Most of it, however, is coming from inside his own family rather than the results over the last year or so.

“I’ve got seven kids,” the 30-year-old tells The Ring. “They are all boys. My eldest are twins. They turn 17 in January. I had them when I was 14, and I turned 15 three months later. They’ll be coming to the fight.

“I’ve got four big boys really. There are only two years separating the eldest four, so I need to make sure their dad is winning these big fights now.

“But actually the pressure comes mostly from the babies, you know. The younger ones don’t care what they say, they’re straight to the point. I Facetimed my 7 year old and asked him if he watched the fight, and he said, ‘Yeah, but you lost didn’t you?’

“It’s just harsh. They can be savage.”

Davis also used the word harsh to describe two of the judges’ scoring of his last fight, a split decision loss to Caoimhin Agyarko at Windsor Park in Belfast. However, given the nature of the defeat, it was not too damaging to his pursuit of the British title.

“I said before that fight that if I didn’t win then, what right would I have to fight for it?” He adds. “But I believe I beat Caoimhin, I’ve watched it back, and I know I won that fight.

“Yeah, the decision wound me up, but because I know that I did enough, it hasn’t made me have a dip or stressed me out, I haven’t felt like that. I can take a lot from it.”

It means that despite a testing run of results, Davis could still end the year as the British and Commonwealth champion, which would set him up for a huge 2026. Despite such unusual activity levels over the past 15 months, Davis has no plans to slow down, either.

“I asked to be a boxer,” he says. “This career is short, and you’ve got to make the most of it. I could have this fight and if someone tells me I’ve got another fight in eight weeks, I’m taking that fight in eight weeks. I started my career late, and I’ve only got five or six years left. I’m 30 now, but I want to be done by the time I’m 36.

“So as many fights can come, I’m just going to keep fighting, man.”

Davis’ activity has resulted in him becoming one of the better known faces in British boxing, but it was not always thus. Before he faced Ewan Mackenzie on a Matchroom show two years ago this month, there were very few people who knew about the man who had turned his life around with boxing following two prison spells.

Davis told his fellow inmates that they would one day see him on TV, and he was right. He has become a regular on television shows given his willingness to fight anyone on any notice.

But "The Black Panther" says that phase of his career comes to an end on Saturday night, and the next one starts thereafter, once he is the British and Commonwealth champion.

“Listen,” he says. “I'm going to win this. Remember I told you. I'm going to win this, and then there's a lot of big things to come. We're going to call this one the end of the beginning, man. Yeah, I like that; the end of the beginning

“I'm gonna go out there, win the British and Commonwealth titles, and then I'm going to go on and become the boxer I know I can be.”