A PRO boxer tipped for glory has been suspended after smashing his brother’s car in a head-on crash while high on cocaine.
Talented Ryan Garner, known as “The Piranha”, has won all six of his bouts since turning pro last year but has been temporarily banned from fighting by the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBC).
Southampton Magistrates’ Court heard the former junior European amateur champion took two lines of the Class A before crashing his sibling’s vehicle on May 21.
After seeing a vehicle coming towards him in Southampton, Hants, he swerved and crashed the Ford Fiesta into a parked car shortly after 11pm.
A court heard the 19-year-old had “succumbed to peer pressure” in taking the drug and “misjudged the gap between the oncoming vehicle”.
Sentencing him, District Judge Peter Greenfield said: “It sounds like a promising career and no doubt you realise a positive drug test could end it.
“It was a fundamental error. Hopefully I don’t see you in here again.”
Garner, of Southampton, was handed an 80-hour unpaid work order and a two-year-driving ban.
He will have to wait to attend a BBBC Southern Area Council meeting which could take months to learn his boxing fate.
His next scheduled fight in September will have to be postponed, or even cancelled.
However Robert Smith, the BBBC general secretary, offered Garner hope of returning to boxing.
He said: “I do not know when his (suspension) order will finish.
“I see it as a silly mistake; he was lucky no one was seriously injured in the incident.
“I hope he learns from this mistake and won’t make it again.
“We take a dim view of any fighter who takes drugs and we will take action accordingly.”
The court heard Garner had also taken benzoylecgonine, which the defence said was considered a metaboliser, before taking cocaine.
Mitigating, Jane Joslin said: “Mr Garner succumbed to peer pressure.
“After celebrating with friends in Woolston, he then got into his brother’s car by himself before the incident occurred.
“Now he has no access to a vehicle as his brother won’t be insuring him again.
“He has no previous convictions and it’s the first time he’s taken the drug and has no intentions of doing so again in the future.
“His only income is his boxing career.
“His last fight was on July 8 in which he was paid £800 per round.”
Garner’s manager Frank Warren also represents WBO world middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders and double Olympic gold medallist Nicola Adams OBE.
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