Year of the Piranha

The Queensberry team last week made a rare trip south to the home of Southampton Football Club to officially signpost our March 1 show featuring the local boy made good.

To avoid confusion, we staged the media event in the home city of our headliner Ryan Garner but, as you will be aware, the show will take place 30-odd minutes down the road in Bournemouth at the BIC.

At the present time there is no arena facility in Southampton, but we want to reward Ryan and let him capitalise on his rapidly growing supporter base by at least bringing him closer to him.

Which takes us to the Bournemouth International Centre. The BIC is the perfect launchpad for Ryan on the South Coast, with the venue having a capacity of 3,400 in a sort of amphitheatre setting and not a bad view in the house. There is plenty of parking, good public transport, lots of bars inside the Centre and, of course, a multitude of local hotels and accommodation.

The reaction to parading the Piranha by the seaside has been something else. Ryan and his trainer-manager Wayne Batten have been absolutely inundated with ticket requests and his personal sales are already right up there with the best of them.

Ryan is a popular boy anyway but I must also pay tribute to Southampton FC for the way they have mobilised behind him and made the whole city aware of this prodigious talent within their number.

The aim for both Ryan and ourselves is to showcase him in a massive fight on the pitch at St Mary’s. This can happen, but he has got some tricky business to contend with first.

With what he achieved last year with big championship wins over Liam Dillon and Archie Sharp, we wanted Ryan to take a significant step forward with a major belt for his headline attraction.

So he will be fighting on March 1 for the EBU European super featherweight title against the undefeated Spaniard Salvador Jimenez. This will be a tough, tough test for Ryan and he knows it. He cannot afford to be distracted by enjoying his home comforts because this guy is coming to win.

That being said, I have always had enormous faith and a big liking for Ryan. I fully expect him to prevail and move on to fulfil the obvious potential we saw in him when we signed him up as an 18-year-old.

He has had a few wobbles along the way but perhaps it was all meant to be. Physically and mentally he is now in prime condition to really make a name for himself and realise his destiny.

Ryan now also has the opportunity to put his local region on the boxing map and really give the sport a big nudge in the right direction down there.

I am looking forward to helping Ryan make this happen and March 1 will actually be my first time promoting down there. We’ve put together a bumper card and I cannot wait to embark on a new horizon by the sea.