I recently moved into a house and along with it inherited many container plants, and I'm still trying to figure out how to best care for them. One of the plants we have is a red abyssinian banana (at least, I'm 95% sure it's a red abyssinian based on photos). The tree is currently planted in a half whiskey barrel on our front patio, but it's kind of in a bad spot because the fronds are now blocking our walkway, and as a result it keeps getting damaged.

I was thinking about either repotting it into another container (the whiskey barrel is kind of rotting away), or planting it into the ground, but either way, moving it to a different location.

Will I kill it if I do that? It's probably 7-8 feet tall, and has about 8 leaves right now. Also, will it ever fruit? Is there any way to guess when it will do so if I don't know the age of the plant? And would it be better to put it into another container, or right into the ground? Oh, and I'm in Southern California, btw.