At the start of the 2015/16 season, Leicester City were favourites to finish bottom of the Premier League table, with odds of 5,000-1 that they would actually finish at the top.

The huge underdog quickly became the season’s buzzword, playing with abandon and beating one big team after another on their way to first place.

It was only in the last quarter of the season that the traditional big names in English football began to realise that they had massively underestimated them.

By this point, Leicester had already got to grips with the challenge and played with unwavering belief and momentum. While the bigger teams crumbled under the pressure and expectations, they went about their work with smiles on their faces and eventually won the title by a whopping ten points, leaving giants like Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham in their wake.

Tyler Denny, 19-2-3 (1 KO), is not a 5,000-1 underdog to defeat Hamzah Sheeraz, 20-0 (16 KOs), on September 21 at Wembley Stadium, but three years ago a bookmaker would have given pretty good odds on the 33-year-old European middleweight champion reaching this stage.

Sheeraz has been groomed for success and looked sensational when he stopped Austin “Ammo” Williams in June, but Denny has quietly been on a great run and comes into the fight with the best stoppage of his career against Felix Cash. He shouldn’t have been here at all, but suddenly the perpetual underdog poses a very serious threat to the bigger, more established name.

“It’s a beautiful story, but I want to continue it,” Denny told Queensberry Promotions. “It continues on September 21

“I imagine it. Sometimes I can’t quite grasp it. This is what I’m going to do. For me it’s all about winning. Even if it’s Wembley, I’d rather fight at Walsall Town Hall if it meant I won. For me it’s all about winning. That’s the main goal.”

“Even if it’s a fairy tale, if I really thought I had no chance, I wouldn’t take it. I know it will be a tough fight, but I really believe I will win and upset a lot of people. But I’m used to that now. Life goes on.”

Although the magnitude of the occasion and the venue will be unique to most fighters competing at Wembley, the circumstances of the fight itself are by no means alien to Denny. Time and time again he has stepped into the shoes of the opponent and time and time again he has emerged victorious.

After a rocky start to his career, he has broken the records of River Wilson-Bent, Brad Rea, reigning British champion Brad Pauls and former Lonsdale titleholder Cash, as well as stopping Matteo Signani to win the European title.

Sheeraz is ranked in the top five of every governing body and is widely seen as the fighter capable of bringing long-term order and credibility to a lesser-known 160lbs division, but Denny has begun to climb the rankings himself and has learned not to put limits on his own ambitions. Denny is not the type to be bothered by the idea that he is destined to be just another part of Sheeraz’s story, but he is determined to prove that the 25-year-old made the biggest mistake of his life in deciding to fight him.

“You have to give him the credit he deserves. I watched ‘Ammo’ Williams’ fight and thought, ‘Wow, that was a world class performance.’ But I won the European title and defended it against a guy who was supposed to be in the world championship, so I have to put myself in that category too,” he said.

“Unfortunately for Hamzah, he’s next on the list. I have a lot of respect for him, but that’s boxing and that’s what’s going to happen on September 21st. I’ve beaten a lot of undefeated people and I’m written off against all of them. I see online already that it won’t go past two rounds, but that’s what they said last time. It means nothing to me. Honestly, I kind of like proving them wrong. I don’t even go back and comment and say, ‘What did you say?’ It’s good. I like thinking in my own head, ‘What are you saying now?'”

Sheeraz will be the bigger, younger, harder-hitting fighter on September 21, but rather than give him a convenient list of reasons why he can’t win, Denny prefers to look at them as the classic elements of another upset victory.

“Brad Rea was too,” he said. “River Wilson-Bent was a big, tall guy. He’s just a normal guy. He breathes the same air as me and he bleeds. That means nothing to me. He’s undefeated? That means nothing to me. To me it’s just another fight, just on the biggest stage possible.”

John Evans has written for a number of well-known publications and websites for over a decade. You can follow John on X. @John_Evans79