GARY Cornish cuts a pretty menacing figure for a sacrificial lamb. This homespun product of the Highlands stands 6ft 7in tall, weighs in at around 18 stone, and wears his love for his county like a latter-day William Wallace. A tattoo on his chest reads ‘Alba gu Brath’, while every conceivable part of his giant frame is covered in saltires, including the one which is clipped into the back of his skull. All that will be missing when the 28-year-old walks out at the O2 Arena in London on Saturday night to face his destiny will be the Mel Gibson war paint.

The watching world, of course, gives him about as much chance as the Scots had at Stirling Bridge or Bannockburn. They dismiss Cornish’s chances of claiming the vacant Commonwealth title, assuming that he is fated merely to become the next victim on Anthony Joshua’s route to heavyweight glory. None of the Londoner’s 13 opponents to date have lasted three rounds with him and so routine does the English media presume this one will be that much of the talk this week has centred on the topic of Joshua’s next fight, a grudge match against his one-time amateur nemesis Dillian Whyte.

Cornish, though, deserves more respect than that. The Scot too is unbeaten, having won all 21 of his previous bouts, some of them against the same kind of jobbing deadbeats devoured by Joshua. In fact, unlike the much hyped 2012 Olympic gold medallist, the IBO Inter Continental champion truly is unbeaten, as he never lost in the amateur ranks either. Throw in a bit of Scotland versus England and all the ingredients are present for quite an occasion.

“I guess it’s like most sportsmen in England,” Cornish told Herald Sport. “They just seem to get more hype. You see it with their footballers too. To be honest, I don’t see much difference. We are both unbeaten. We have fought a couple of the same fighters, so it should be a good fight. It doesn’t really bother me what people think, everyone is entitled to their opinion. I will just do what I do. The Scotland-England thing always gets the juices flowing too, doesn’t it? There is no getting away from it.”

Cornish goes by the nickname of the Highlander – a healthy travelling army from his home town of Inverness will be in London’s docklands on Saturday night – but in general his is a low key existence. He will pick up a healthy six figure sum for his exertions at the 02 but boxing for him is merely a supplementary strand to a life which centres on his day job as a joiner, and being a father to his children Alasdair, Thomas and Lily. He is engaged to Lauren, the mother of Lily, with the wedding planned for the summer of 2017. He has had five weeks off to devote himself to the scary prospect of facing Joshua and has used it wisely.

“Boxing is not my main job,” said Cornish. “I am a joiner, so boxing is still like a hobby to me. I don’t see it as work. I love the training, putting the work in at the gym. The only hard part is that obviously when you have a big fight coming up you have to give up a lot of time at work and with family time. I have quite an understanding boss and fiancée so I am quite lucky that way. Most of Inverness seems to be on its way down to London. I am going to get a lot of support and it is quite overwhelming.”

While Joshua is a natural born boxer, there has been an accidental quality to Cornish’s emergence. He was 24 before he turned professional, having spent his early years attempting to make the grade as a pro footballer. His 6ft 7in frame was put to good use in the target man role for last season’s Highland League champions Brora Rangers.

“I suppose I did have hopes of being a professional footballer,” said Cornish. “I played a lot during my younger years. I used to just play for local teams, then I played for Brora’s Under-19s and had one full season for the first team, but I didn’t enjoy it too much to be honest. I played for a few different teams, and for every different team I seemed to play a different position. It was always right down the centre - centre back, centre forward or even centre midfield. I don’t really have much connection with Brora any more. A couple of my mates still play for them but I support Clachnacuddin.”

Another missed shot at stardom came with the mishap during his amateur days which cost him the opportunity to compete for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. “I got a phone call to say I had been picked for the Commonwealths and could I start training next week,” he said. “I thought ‘I’d better start getting fit then’ so I was cycling to my work, but I fell off my bike and broke my wrist. It was obviously not meant to be for me, there is no point dwelling on it.”

As improbable as it may be, victory on Saturday night would propel Cornish to overnight fame and stranger things have happened. It is worth remembering that Willie Limond travelled to the 02 to take on the much hyped Amir Khan in similar circumstances back in July 2007, and while the Bolton fighter came through in the end, it was not before Limond dumped him on the canvas for the first time in his pro career.

“All the pressure is on Joshua because the bookies are saying he should just walk out there, hit Gary Cornish on the chin, and that will be the end of the thing,” says Cornish’s manager Tommy Gilmour. “People seem to think that everybody Joshua fights is just going to fold. But the higher you go up the ladder, that is not the case.

“He has only ever done one or two rounds because he was fighting guys who had no ambition,” adds Gilmour. “So they folded over, curled up in the corner, got their money, and went back to where they came from. This is the first time he has come up against anybody with any ambition. If Gary wins this, then all of a sudden he is in the top 10 fighters in the world. If Anthony Joshua loses it, you could be reading in the Sunday papers about mass suicides in London.”