Vasyl Lomachenko faces biggest challenge in hard-punching, unbeaten Nicholas Walters

More than 50 years and 1,999 events later, Hall of Fame promoter Bob Arum believes he has a fighter in his stable worthy of comparison to his very first client, Muhammad Ali.

This fighter is about as far from Ali in every way you could imagine, except for possessing the one quality that sets great fighters apart from the rest: unparalleled technical boxing skills.

Arum, the founder and chairman of Top Rank Promotions, might not be an impartial observer, but he insists he hasn't seen anybody since Ali who can compare as a ring technician to his current star champion, Vasyl Lomachenko.

Lomachenko, 28, the two-time Olympic gold medalist from Ukraine, is already a two-division champion and amazingly has fought only seven times as a pro. Not even Ali came close to matching the record start by the current WBO junior lightweight champ Lomachenko (6-1, 4 KOs).

"Vasyl Lomachenko is technically the best fighter that I have seen since the early Muhammad Ali," Arum said this week during a conference call previewing Saturday's HBO title fight (10:35 p.m. ET) between Lomachenko and slugger Nicholas Walters (26-0-1, 21 KOs) at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. "There is nobody that I have seen, and there have been a lot of great technical fighters that I have seen - Alexis Arguello was one, Floyd Mayweather certainly, Manny Pacquiao - but there has been nobody with the skills that Vasyl Lomachenko has."

There is a certain irony to Lomachenko's being part of Arum's 2,000 ^th event since March 29, 1966, when world heavyweight champion Ali defended his title against George Chuvalo in Arum's debut as a promoter. The Ukrainian is part of a trend in boxing toward the smaller weight divisions. In Ali's heyday, the heavyweight division was boxing's premier division, but has struggled in recent years to regain that popularity.

Lomachenko vs. Walters is a throwback in the sense of being a classic boxer vs. puncher matchup. Walters, 30, from Jamaica, is a big power puncher who has knocked out former champions Nonito Donaire and Vic Darchinyan, though he struggled in his most recent fight, a majority decision against Jason Sosa last December that was scored a draw on two scorecards and 96-94 for Sosa on the third.

Lomachenko desired to fight for a title in his first professional fight, but settled for that goal in his second. But he lost to wily veteran Orlando Salido. Since then he has won five in a row, most recently a spectacular knockout against Roman Martinez to take Martinez's junior lightweight title at the Madison Square Garden Theater in June. He's not concerned with Walters' power, only with taking on the best opponents he can find.

"This is a very important bout for me because many boxing experts and many people in boxing rank Walters as the highest-rated fighter in our division," Lomachenko said. "He is a very hard puncher and a very good boxer and it's a very important thing to me to fight the best and it's important for me because everyone says he is a very good fighter."

Asked how he thought the fight would play out, Lomachenko said, "I think it is going to be very, very hard for me in the first four rounds, then after that I will be trying to terminate the bout."

Arum has touted Lomachenko as a possible opponent for Pacquiao, who came out of retirement earlier this month to defeat Jessie Vargas and regain the WBO welterweight title.

"Lomachenko wants challenges and he is a tremendous talent," Arum said. "His upside is enormous and a lot of people are watching him - not just boxing fans - because he is an unbelievable talent."

The creatively slick southpaw, who now resides in the boxing/training hotbed of Oxnard, Calif., said he would love to face Pacquiao at some point, "but not in my next fight," he said.

Arum said he has no desire to try to slow Lomachenko's rapid rise.

"From the first day I met him, when he sat down with me and we discussed his future, I was concerned because people were offering him large signing bonuses, he told me that he didn't want a signing bonus; he wanted to earn his own money," Arum said. "All he wanted was challenges that I would present to him. He doesn't want any gimmes - he wants every fight to be a challenge. So at 130 pounds, who is more of a challenge than Nicholas Walters?

"I am not going to slow him down. He knows his ability a lot more than I do. And you have to give his father credit - his father is probably the best trainer in boxing today and I say that without any question, because look what the father produced from the Ukrainian Olympic team in London. Oleksandr Usyk, who is now a cruiserweight champion, Alexandr Gvozdyk, a light heavyweight who you saw last week on the Ward-Kovalev pay-per-view, who is a future champion - they are all Ukrainians and they were all trained by Vasyl's father. So he has a lot going for him."

Walters, nicknamed "The Axeman" for the way he chops down opponents, said a big difference in the two fighters is that despite his rapid rise, Lomachenko has tasted defeat as a pro but Walters hasn't.

"The achievement is good for him. And Bob knows what he is talking about since he has been in the business for 50 years," Walters said. "I don't think this is a different Lomachenko from the guy that lost to Salido - he is the same Lomachenko.

"They say a leopard cannot change his spots right? Since he did lose to Salido, he can be as technical as he wants, but I am in the hurt business. This is a gladiator sport and I fight all of my fights . . . like a gladiator. He can come in with his technical fight on Saturday and I am going to be up for it and put on a hell of a show."