REVEALED: The man behind the mask... meet the boxer who has come through a series of NIGHTMARES to become a world title contender!

Becoming part of the elite goes way beyond mere technique and skillsets. It’s about mentality, resilience, desire, deep wells of self-knowledge, of being capable of going beyond the natural limits of mind and body and still coming through the other end. 

It’s about facing up to the prospect of losing everything and facing it down.

Nathaniel Collins stands at the gates of boxing’s big-time ahead of Saturday night’s European featherweight title fight with defending champion Cristobal Lorente of Spain at the Braehead Arena in his native Glasgow. 

Victory in this final eliminator for the WBC world title will see him propelled directly into the mix for lucrative, transformational showdowns against the very best 126-lb fighters on the planet.

And it’s fair to say there’s no shortage of life experience - of confronting adversity, illness, life-threatening situations - for the 29-year-old to draw upon as he endeavours to send a burgeoning professional career of 17 wins with eight knockouts onto an entirely different level.

Collins was born with a condition called gastroschisis, where the failure of his abdominal wall to form properly caused his intestines and internal organs to grow outside his body, leading to immediate surgery and months spent inside an incubator.

‘I was born fighting and that’s always been in me,’ he has reflected on those uncertain early days.

Having boxed at youth level, a serious car crash in his late teens - in which he and four other passengers had to be rescued by the roof coming off the vehicle - left him with knee problems and in a wheelchair for a short spell before moving onto crutches.

It also led to him quitting the ring, going to work in a bar in France and then returning home having piled on more than 20kg and facing a crossroads.

Having buckled down and returned to the sport as ‘a different animal’ to represent Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Australia in 2018 and embark upon a pro career that has delivered British, Commonwealth and EBU Silver titles, everything then came crashing down around his ears in May of last year.

Collins was rushed to hospital with a twisted bowel and put through eight hours of emergency surgery. His life was on the line. Being told by medics that there could be no guarantee of his boxing career surviving, his time on the operating table brought tears and introspection.

The man, nicknamed ‘The Nightmare’, will, of course, be back in business this weekend after overcoming the odds yet again. He’ll be out there fighting for a better future for his partner Anna and daughter Izzy, whose name will be brandished across the waistband of his trunks.

He’ll be performing his ringwalk with his trademark mask on, a tradition inspired by watching Greek-Australian lightweight Michael Katsidis entering the arena wearing a Spartan warrior’s helmet as a kid. 

However, it’s the man behind the mask - the infectious, positive, determined character eager to make that leap into the upper echelons of The Hardest Game - that deserves just as much attention and admiration.

‘I don’t think there’s any doubt that a lot of the adversity he has faced has given him the strength, the mental strength, and drive that he has,’ ventured Collins’ Glasgow-based manager Sam Kynoch.

‘There were moments when he was lying in that hospital bed after bowel surgery, questioning everything, and he has come out the other side stronger.

‘They said it might have made the surgery more difficult because he had already had surgery in that area when he was young. The surgeon did an excellent job, though, because what Nathaniel was looking at, at the start, was a stoma bag and never boxing again.

‘The situation was genuinely life-threatening. Talking to his trainer Joe Ham Sr, you hear just how Nathaniel has taken it up a gear since that surgery.

‘You’ve heard that expression about people having the dog in them - and it’s there. He’s just got it. Even when he won the EBU Silver title last year in the York Hall in London against Francesco Grandelli, a really good fighter, there was an elbow clash and his nose ended up facing in the opposite direction.

‘He boxed the next nine rounds being unable to breathe, bleeding profusely, and that just showed me how he can adapt and dig in. He has been up against a lot and, every time, he has prevailed.

‘I’d never worry about him when the going gets tough. He is built for that.

‘Don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that, just a matter of months after his surgery, when other people are starting to walk again, he ran an ultra-marathon.

‘He is a brilliant guy with a really good nature, but the thing with him is that his drive and his focus is second to none. He is just built different. He is a natural-born competitor.

‘After his last fight, he was away doing a Hyrox workout competition two days later. He’s just that kind of guy. In terms of career longevity, he is a clean-living guy. He wants to make money and put it away. He’s grounded, a family man, has a young daughter.

‘You wouldn’t necessarily think on meeting him that he was a fighter, but he can turn it on.

‘He is just very difficult to beat. He is a southpaw, good style, hard chin, makes adjustments, good engine, so he is going to be a nightmare for anyone at any level.’

Living through his own nightmare shortly after beating Grandelli on points in May 2024 no doubt fuels that desire to become a fighting great.

Collins had been visiting his mum for dinner when becoming unwell. He lay down in her porch and couldn’t get back up. Taken back to his own home, the pain coursing through his body became unbearable and an ambulance was called to transport him to hospital.

‘They gave me the maximum amount of morphine you can give someone and my pain level was still 10. It was pretty quick after that I went to surgery,’ recalled Collins in an interview with his promoters Queensberry.

‘I was like: “What’s going to happen to my boxing?”. (The surgeon) was like: “I don’t care about your boxing. You shouldn’t care about your boxing just now either. Your bowel is going to explode”. I just burst into tears.

‘I went through a weird stage of not being able to walk up the stairs. I slept in the living room for a month. (After bowel surgery), I was right back to training as soon as I was able, though. I wasn’t allowed to box for x amount of weeks, but, when I could run, I was running ultra marathons.’

There was a time, though, when even running was a bridge too far. After recovering from that car accident in 2016, Collins stepped away from boxing.

He took up barwork in France during the ski season to get away from things and enjoyed the high life. When he finally returned to Scotland, he was miles overweight. And even after biting the bullet and returning to fitness, confidence issues continued to blight his progress - leading to a series of sessions with a hypnotherapist that changed everything.

Collins has talked about feeling balls of light enter his body through his feet and washing away all the dark, negative, defeatist thoughts. It is not a practise he has maintained, but he is convinced it was essential in turning his life and career around at the time.

‘The reason I did that is that I had just got into uni at the time and my mum had said to me that if I didn’t win the Scottish Championships as an amateur, I’d need to chuck it - because if you can’t beat people in Scotland, you can’t beat people all over the world,’ he said.

‘At that point, I maybe hadn’t taken boxing so seriously. When she said that and there was the possibility of boxing being gone, I thought I had to switch on here. That year, I won the Scottish championships, went abroad, went to the Commonwealth Games and it kind of rolled from then.

‘I truly believe the hypnosis helped me to be how I am now.’

With former undisputed light-welterweight world champion Josh Taylor, who will be at Braehead on commentary duties on Saturday, having retired, Collins has been billed as ‘The Next King Of Scotland’ in the promotional work leading up to the Lorente fight.

See off the Spaniard and the sky is certainly the limit. Right now, it looks like a convincing win will more or less guarantee a crack at a world title in 2026.

‘It’s a final eliminator and the WBC put out some pretty strong wording on their website this week, talking about how Nathaniel is next in line after this,’ Kynoch told Daily Mail Sport. ‘He is already their Silver champion and that makes this massive.’

Quite who Collins would fight is less clear. Current WBC kingpin, American Stephen Fulton, is stepping up to fight O’Shaquie Foster for the world title at super-feather in Las Vegas on October 25 and appears to have no intentions of returning to the 126-pound division.

That would leave the WBC’s interim champ Bruce ‘Shushu’ Carrington of the US as Collins’ most likely opponent.

‘If the WBC featherweight title is vacated, Carrington is the interim champion and, if Nathaniel wins, I’d expect them to call for Nathaniel to face him for the vacant title,’ stated Kynoch.

‘If Fulton loses and decides to come back down in weight, they’re expecting it to be Nathaniel against Fulton. That’s our understanding.’

However, there is also the mouthwatering - and money-making - possibility of a Scotland-England grudge match with Liverpudlian WBA champ Nick Ball.

Both men were lined up to clash for the British title three years ago, but the contest didn’t take place and there have been words exchanged back and forth. If the match-up does happen, it is more likely to be a little way down the line, but an explosive win over Lorente might force the issue.

‘If Nathaniel was offered Nick Ball, he’d take it,’ said Kynoch. ‘Ideally, he’d go and win the WBC and unify against Ball, but it all comes down to how you are winning.

‘If you are exciting and you are getting people out of there, all the better. You become more commercially viable and can make bigger things happen.’

And becoming commercially viable is the next step for Collins. It is remarkable that he is on the precipice of competing for world titles and, yet, it feels like he hasn’t really registered with mainstream sports fans.

Beating fellow Scot Lee McGregor in emphatic fashion in four rounds at the Hydro in Glasgow in May, on the undercard of Taylor’s final fight against Ekow Essuman, did raise awareness. 

However, Kynoch understands the current nature of the fight game - with different governing organisations and so many different TV deals and streaming platforms - raises challenges that can really only be overcome quickly by belts and success.

‘Boxing is so fractured and there are so many different platforms,’ reasoned Kynoch. ‘I think Nathaniel has flown under the radar a bit, but the Lee McGregor win helped a lot in terms of his profile and I hope this will be another step on the way.

‘I remember a similar thing, to a degree, when Ricky Burns was coming through. I remember going to some of the nights at Braehead and Burns wasn’t terribly well known compared to where he ended up as a world champion.

‘We are moving in the right direction, but I think Nathaniel is kind of under-rated and not as well-known as he should be. Our hope is that it’s a big turning point this weekend against Lorente. Titles change a lot.

‘First priority is winning, but we want it to be exciting and dramatic as well.

‘With the McGregor fight, many people close to Nathaniel thought it was a 50-50 fight, but he did a real number on him and it was impressive. The nature of that victory helped propel him and he needs the same now.’

The reaction of Collins in the immediate aftermath of lifting the WBC Silver title by stopping McGregor, his collapse to the canvas in tears, spoke to the emotional toll of the journey he has been through over the past 16 months, in particular.

‘I had so many points to prove coming back. I thought that people would think I’m done,’ he said.

‘I don’t think anybody knows the level of things I have been through. For my own mind and mental health, it was like a great weight had been lifted.’

It’s European and world title straps on the cards to be lifted next.