BARRY McGuigan's eyes light up at the thought of the biggest all-Scottish tear up for years. The Irish fight legend is promoting former Commonwealth gold medalist Josh Taylor, who takes on England's Dave Ryan for the Commonwealth title at the Meadowbank Arena on October 21. A fortnight earlier, Coatbridge's finest, Ricky Burns, defends his world title at Glasgow's SSE Hydro against the dangerous Kiryl Relikh of Belarus. Obstacles for both men to overcome then, but the brains trust at McGuigan's Cyclone Promotions camp is already working overtime, to the thought of pitting the two men together in the kind of classic East-West struggle which could be a modern day Ken Buchanan versus Jim Watt. Throw in a bit of changing of the guard and raging against the dying of the light, and it would be quite a contest.

"We are looking at Ricky Burns already - I don't want to be disrespectful to Ricky Burns or anybody else but I think Josh is the finest talent to come out of Scotland for years," said McGuigan. "I genuinely believe that he is another Ken Buchanan. It is ironic that he comes from the same city and fights in tartan too.

"But I really think we have got to treat Taylor as a Scottish star," added the 55-year-old from County Monaghan, like Taylor a Commonwealth gold medalist as an amateur before he embarked on a storied professional career. "I don't want to pigeonhole him, and I mean that with the greatest respect to the Edinburgh people. Often what happened with Buchanan and Watt was that one was known as a Glasgow star and one was an Edinburgh star, that is not what I want. So we will try to move Josh around, maybe consider going to Gleneagles, where there is a lovely arena, or down to Glasgow, where he won his Commonwealth amateur title.

"But we are already looking at Burns. His next fight is a 12-round fight so it doesn't matter if it is a 12-rounder for the Commonwealth title, the British title or the world title. It is too early for that and obviously he has to get a lot more miles on the clock but we are already looking at Burns and he is not far off."

Taylor has just six pro fights to his name, lasting a matter of nine rounds, but McGuigan isn't the only one who feels the 25-year-old from Prestonpans is destined for greatness. His Cyclone Promotions stablemate Carl Frampton, now rated in the top ten pound-for-pound boxers on the planet, purrs about the ability he sees when he watches him sparring and sees him as a future world champion. Prior to his maiden pro contest, a one-round defeat of Archie Weah in El Paso, Texas, last July, a similar assessment was offered by Nacho Beristain, the venerable trainer of the likes of Juan Manuel Marquez and Oscar de la Hoya.

"Listen we turned up in El Paso and Nacho Beristain turns up," said McGuigan. "This guy is 76 years old, he watches him on the pads and he watches him in the sparring and says this kid is going to be world champion, he is going to be one of the best he has ever seen at that stage of his career. And he hadn't even had one professional fight yet."

McGuigan knows that the boxing game is all about risk and reward but he insists he simply wouldn't have put his boxer in the position of going 12 rounds with a veteran fighter like Dave Ryan if he hadn't seen that he can cope with 10 rounds of sparring with bigger middleweights in the gym. Frampton tweeted that a sparring session between Taylor and Argenis Mendez, the former world super featherweight champion, was the best he had ever seen.

"Dave Ryan is a very tough fighter," said McGuigan. "It is a very audacious step for us to take, a big risk to take our world class talent putting him in on his seventh fight for a Commonwealth title. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think he could fight 12 rounds - I have seen him spar 10 rounds against a middleweight. What I am judging his pedigree and his potential on is those rounds in sparring against big middleweights and welterweights. He just stands them on their heads - he is very very special."

While some fighters are four or five pounds overweight the day before a fight, McGuigan is surprised if Taylor turns up that amount over this target weight when he turns up to start his camp. "He always arrives in condition because he knows I won't accept anything less," says McGuigan. "In fact Frampton has upped his game since Taylor came on board. I watch him every day - around champions, watching how they perform and train each day. I have invested an awful lot of money in him, because I know this is the next sensation from Scotland. He is a stand-up comic, absolutely hilariously funny, I genuinely think he could be a crossover star. But first he has to do it in the ring."