“I’m one of the best players in the world and deserve to be in this Premier League” – Defiant Stephen Bunting ready for Cardiff cauldron

After silencing his doubters with a stunning Night Four win in Belfast, ‘The Bullet’ arrives in Wales tonight carrying renewed confidence, a point to prove — and a quarter-final date with Welsh hero Gerwyn Price.

Stephen Bunting walked into Belfast’s SSE Arena last Thursday without a point to his name. He walked out as the Night Four champion. What happened in between was one of the more remarkable individual performances the 2026 Premier League has produced — and the man himself had plenty to say about it.

Now, with the Premier League roadshow rolling into Cardiff’s Utilita Arena tonight for Night Five, Bunting arrives in Wales carrying genuine momentum for the first time this season, and carrying words that will have put every doubter on notice.

From Zero to Hero in One Night

The facts alone are striking. Bunting arrived in Belfast without a point to his name, but left with the Night Four trophy after beating Luke Humphries 6-4, dismantling Jonny Clayton 6-0, and then sweeping aside Gian van Veen 6-2 in the final.

Those are not results that suggest a player fortunate to be in the tournament. They are the results of a man who — when it clicked — produced the night’s most authoritative darts from start to finish.

Against Humphries, Bunting punished profligacy on the outer ring, taking out 143 for a crucial break and landing a nerveless 123 on the bull to swing the match. While Humphries missed nine darts at double, Bunting missed just once in his first six attempts and averaged comfortably north of 100.

Bunting registered his highest Premier League average of 106.63 in the quarter-final win over defending champion Humphries, then backed that up with another 106 average in the 6-0 clean sweep against Jonny Clayton in the semi-finals, before a clinical 6-2 win over Van Veen in the final.

Three matches. Three wins. Two 106 averages. One nightly title. The critics had their answer.

“Everyone Was Writing Me Off”

What made the night equally memorable was what Bunting said afterwards — raw, emotional, and entirely without diplomatic filter.

“Everyone was writing me off before the tournament,” he told Sky Sports. “People were saying I shouldn’t be in it but I know how hard I work. These are the nights I play for and the crowd pulled me through.”

He then lifted the curtain on the lengths he had gone to in order to find the mental edge. “I had hypnotherapy this morning at eight o’clock and we always think positive. Even over the last three weeks when it’s not been going well and I’ve not been getting the results, I felt like I played well on the European Tour, felt great on the ProTour, got to a final — I just ran out of steam in the final.”

And then the line that has resonated loudest: “I honestly do believe I’m one of the best players in the world. I believe I deserve to be in this Premier League and this goes a long way to showing why I should be here.”

A teary-eyed Bunting continued: “Every time I step up, I still believe I am one of the hardest players to beat. People find their best game and I always seem to lose to the winner. Tonight, I am the winner.”

The Backstory: A Painful Education

To understand the scale of Bunting’s Belfast triumph, context matters. The 40-year-old Liverpudlian is no journeyman. He is a former BDO World Champion, a player who has beaten the best in the world on the biggest stages, and a man whose place in this tournament was earned on merit. But merit alone does not silence the noise when results dry up.

He had seen his place in the tournament questioned by spectators after failing to win a game in the first three weeks — that followed nine weeks to register a point in last year’s event, his first Premier League involvement since being a challenger in 2020.

Rather than let the criticism fester, Bunting took deliberate action. He came off social media because of the criticism, built a support team around him, leaned on hypnotherapy, and maintained a belief in his own quality that the scoreboard had not yet reflected.

The losing run, he insists, was not wasted. “I learnt a lot from last year. It took me a long while to get that first win, and I’m happy I’ve got that monkey off my back now.”

There is also context that rarely gets mentioned in discussions of his Premier League form. Bunting is the only darts player at the moment with a one-year-old son at home, so he has to juggle family life. That is not an excuse — Bunting offers it as none — but it is a reminder that elite sport does not pause for the realities of life off the oche.

Cardiff: A Different Kind of Test

Tonight’s fixture presents a different challenge entirely. Price — who celebrated victory on Night Two in Antwerp — will headline the proceedings in Cardiff, when he kicks off his challenge against a resurgent Stephen Bunting. Victory over home hero Price would see Bunting draw level on points with the 2020/21 World Champion.

That word — “home” — carries real weight. Gerwyn Price will have the Welsh capital behind him in a way that is difficult to overstate. The Utilita Arena on a Premier League night can generate an atmosphere that tests the mental resolve of even the most seasoned performers, and Price, playing in front of his own people, has historically fed off exactly that energy.

Bunting, though, arrives not as a player clinging to his place in the tournament but as a player who has just put three of the best performances of his Premier League career back to back. “One good night brings massive confidence, and we push on to Cardiff next week,” he said after Belfast. “I’m really looking forward to that one.”

Night Five — What To Watch

The full Night Five quarter-final draw sees Michael van Gerwen take on Luke Humphries, Gian van Veen face league leader Jonny Clayton, Price go up against Bunting, and Luke Littler play Josh Rock.

The table heading into tonight shows Clayton still firmly in charge after his run of form, but with Bunting’s five points from Belfast lifting him to fifth. Clayton tops the pile on 11 points, with Van Veen and Van Gerwen trailing on nine and eight respectively. Rock sits rooted at the bottom with no points, while Littler and Humphries sit just above him.

For Bunting, the message from Belfast could not be clearer. He silenced the doubters. He silenced the keyboard critics who questioned his right to stand alongside the sport’s elite. Now, in a Welsh cauldron that will be rocking for Gerwyn Price, he gets the chance to prove that what happened last Thursday was not a one-night aberration.

He will be ready for it. He always told you he would be.