Lucky 7: James Gallagher's path from Strabane to Madison Square Garden

The best is yet to come for James Gallagher.

In a seven-year span, the 20-year-old featherweight has gone from fighting grown men on the amateur circuit in his native Strabane, Northern Ireland to co-headlining Bellator 180 at the world-renowned Madison Square Garden on Saturday.

Like many who earn their living in the hurt business, Gallagher was introduced to martial arts before he'd even grown any peach fuzz. The highly-touted prospect got his start in karate under his uncle's tutelage, but his desire for pure battles of attrition went unfulfilled by the discipline's tediums, prompting a transition to MMA at the age of 12.

"I find that in karate, it's very limited, especially when I was young. It wasn't enough of a fight for me," Gallagher told theScore. "You didn't really hit each other, it was just like scoring the points. It just wasn't satisfying enough for me - I wanted to fight, that's what I was after. I was after a scrap. And then I found MMA and I got the satisfaction that I was looking for."

Gallagher hit the ground running. By age 13, he'd already joined the amateur circuit, where he met longtime trainer John Kavanagh in just his second bout. The ever-game Irishman had unknowingly agreed to face a 21-year-old on a local show Kavanagh was judging, and when the SBG Ireland head man found out the promoters had pitted a teenager against a man eight years his senior, he refused to take part in the scoring in condemnation of the matchup.

Gallagher went on to gut out a win on points, and while Kavanagh made it known he didn't approve of the physically lopsided tilt, the seed for what later developed into a fruitful partnership between scrappy teen and coach had already been planted.

"When I was young I was training at the small club in Strabane, where I come from, and I just got asked (to fight) at this show that was coming up. It was my second amateur fight, and I was like 'yeah, no problem' - as usual. I didn't ask or anything, who the guy was or whatever. I showed up and then I find out I'm fighting a 21-year-old. I was that kind of a kid, I was eager and I loved the sport and I loved fighting. And that's just the kind of person I was, I needed protecting from my own self.

"John took himself off the judging panel, he wouldn't judge the fight, and then I went out and fought and I beat the guy. We had a scrap and I beat the guy by decision. And then I just got to speaking to John and he told me he didn't agree with stuff like this here … and that was the first time I got to speaking to him and then we just kept meeting at shows regularly and we became kind of friends and such and he invited me down to train."

Gallagher jumped at the opportunity, first juggling school with regular treks to Kavanagh's Dublin-based guild - home of UFC welterweight contender Gunnar Nelson and one Conor McGregor - then ditching the books at 15 to fully devote himself to his craft, although Kavanagh laid down the law and kept him from re-entering the cage until he turned 17.

Cut to three years later, The Strabanimal heads to the Big Apple for his seventh pro contest with a perfect 6-0 record including five wins by submission, but as he readily admits, his steady rise hasn't been immune to trials in the gym - where the sausage is made. While a greener Gallagher might have incessantly tested his limits in training, the 20-year-old about to grace the biggest stage of his career has learned to channel his drive differently, thanks in part to Kavanagh's guidance.

"If I wasn't going hard enough, that wasn't good enough, that kind of thing. The harder the session, the better I was doing, but that's not the case at all sometimes. You have to step back and take more of a learning curve. Sometimes you don't learn much in a hard training session, but in one where you're just playing around you learn many different things. It's just taking the sport for what it is and knowing that if you want something you have to figure out how to get it."

When asked what he's envisioned as the destination of an already hard-fought journey, Gallagher didn't mince words.

"Yeah, I'm going to be the greatest of all time."

His next stop on the road to eternal notoriety goes through the streaking Chinzo Machida at Bellator 180.