Ryan Garner is a happy man.

On Saturday night ‘The Piranha’ will fight undefeated Spaniard, Salvador Jimenez, 14-0-1 (6 KOs), for the vacant European junior lightweight title at the Bournemouth International Centre and, for the first time, he will be the headline attraction.

TNT Sports will broadcast the event

Posters advertising the fight have been plastered around his hometown of Southampton and Garner has been doing a roaring trade in ticket sales.

Last week, the 27 year-old was told that the manager and players from the city’s Premier League football team should be in attendance for his big night and it seems like the club share his enthusiasm about hosting a future fight at their St Mary’s Stadium.

At the moment, Garner, 16-0 (8 KOs), is receiving one piece of good news after another. For a long time it was the total opposite.

“Little old Ryan Garner. Not a nobody, but you know what I mean,” he told The Ring. “Four or five years ago, I couldn't even think something like this would be possible.

"It was bad things, like you say. It's all turned around through just sticking it out.

“Changing my life around, sorting myself out and then, look, it's paid off dividends. Now I'm fighting for a European title.”

Garner’s story isn’t one of the plucky trier finally climbing his way to the top of the bill. This should have happened a long time ago.

It seems like a lifetime ago when stories began to do the rounds about the featherweight prospect who was giving established champions all they could handle in the gym. A quick glimpse at Garner’s profile photograph on BoxRec shows just how young he was at the time.

Back in 2016, he tore onto the scene as a precociously talented 18 year-old and stopped five of his first six opponents as he easily took to life as a professional fighter. Maybe things came too easily.

Garner started to spend more and more time enjoying this life away from the gym and his lifestyle began to badly affect his boxing. In 2018 he was pulled from a show in Leicester after struggling badly to make the weight for a routine work out and seven months later he was withdrawn from a Billy Joe Saunders undercard when he collapsed after standing on the scales.

Garner isn’t a villain. He is a happy go lucky character who was just doing exactly what hundreds of thousands of British twenty-somethings do with their spare time but by doing so, he was allowing a rare talent to go to waste.

Throughout his troubles he managed to remain unbeaten and those who knew and believed in Garner refused to give up hope that he would find his way back. His promoter, Frank Warren, read him the riot act on more than one occasion.

Slowly but surely, Garner grew up and found his way out of his slump. He is now happily settled with a young family and still only 27 years old, he knows that his fists can provide them all with a better life.

“Most people who was in my situation, I got suspended. I was going off the rails. But to stick with it, most people would have jacked in. There's a lot of fighters out there who have been and gone since I've been a pro, ” he said.

“I've stuck it out and look, it's paid off dividends. Frank's stuck with me and it's paid dividends. Now I'm fighting for the European title.

“I'm not old but I've been here since I was 18, so nine years I've been a pro and in that time - because I've been him with Frank from the start - I’ve seen fighters come and go left, right and centre and I'm still here.”

Since the penny finally dropped around three years ago, Garner has begun to reward the faith people held in him. Over the past 20 months, he has boxed four times and improved with every outing.

Beating the aggressive former British champion, Liam Dillon, in exciting fashion last May finally proved to the people that matter that Garner had the ability and gas tank to beat championship level fighters but dominating the previously undefeated and world ranked Archie Sharp just two months later showed that he can handle the pressure of a make or break fight and impose his aggressive style against a quality opponent.

Now he has the opportunity to expand his horizons. Beating Jimenez to win the European 130lb title would push him up the world rankings and nudge him further along the path to achieving what those close to him never stopped believing he was capable of.

“I've had two good wins that put me in good stead and I've got an undefeated Spaniard for the European so it's not like I'm getting these easy fights, do you know what I mean?” he said.

“He doesn't know what it's like to lose. It’s going to be tough, nitty and gritty. I watched one or two rounds when he fought that Juanfe [Gomez, in a European title fight back in November 2023]. I sparred that Juanfe.

“He's not a massive puncher or nothing. He's a boxer, doesn't set a high work rate like I do, and they drew.

“And I think this fella, he does bursts but he also has breathers so I don't think that with the pace I set and stuff like that - I'll be honest with you - I don't think he really should be able to live with me and he's never been in with a body puncher like me either."

After the years of chaos and disruption, calm has descended over Ryan Garner and he much prefers his new way of life.

“I just can't wait to fight now. Honestly, I'm actually buzzing. See, when I fought Archie [Sharp], it was the first time I walked into a ring - and even into the venue before the fight - I had no nerves, no nothing. I was just so confident. Not being arrogant. I had nothing. It was so weird.

“It was like I was a blank canvas.”