Scottish boxing hero Ricky Burns finds himself in quite the predicament ahead of this Saturday’s bout between his countryman Josh Taylor and his gym-mate and sometime sparring partner O’Hara Davies.

Burns accompanied Davies to the public workout yesterday at Intu Braehead, where these two fighters will eventually square off on Saturday night after a protracted slagging match that has marked the build-up to the fight.

But for Burns, it may not only be a quandary over where his loyalties should lie that makes him feel uncomfortable in his chair come Saturday evening, because if Taylor’s manager Barry McGuigan is to believed, he may also be settling down to witness the man who is set to assume his title as Scottish boxing’s biggest star.

If Taylor can defeat Davies, then McGuigan has tipped the up and coming Prestonpans fighter to eventually become the leading light in the fight game north of the border, as Burns’s star begins to fade after his own glittering career in the ring.

And with McGuigan expecting around two million fight fans to tune into the bout on Saturday evening on terrestrial television, he doesn’t think it will be too long before Taylor is a household name throughout the country.

“I think that it’s important Scotland has a big star,” said McGuigan. “Throughout the late 90’s particularly through to the mid-2000s, you had Scott Harrison, and it’s hard to believe that Ricky Burns was in the embryonic stage of his career then and he’s still here.

“If you don’t have a boxer who is at the top of their game and getting national television coverage and coverage in papers, then the sports editors tend to forget about boxing and it kind of disappears.

“It’s a big shout to say that he will be as successful as Ricky Burns, we don’t compare ourselves to anybody because no matter who it is, you can end up disappointed, but while I think that what Ricky Burns has done has been extraordinary, I really believe that Taylor can be an exceptional star.

“Each fight is an acceleration. After five fights he won the Commonwealth and we have been very aggressive with him. He’s been on three world title bouts and had national TV coverage in the States, so you can’t get much better exposure than that.

“It’s not just satellite, he’s been on terrestrial as well. I’m expecting two million to watch this fight. He’s really got it all. He’s a superstar and a great kid.”

There are still tickets left for the fight on Saturday evening, dubbed ‘Bad Blood’ after the rather forced-feeling war of words between the pair on social media, and that is perhaps unsurprising given it is the first time that Taylor has stepped outside of his east-coast home patch to fight professionally in Glasgow.

But McGuigan can see the day soon that he returns to the scene of his greatest triumph as an amateur, winning the gold medal in the light-welterweight division at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, to fight at the Hydro.

“That’s our aim, that’s our objective,” he said. “You know how parochial it is, that tends to be the case with coverage of sport in general. That’s particularly the case in boxing, and it takes a bit of time to break out of that and become a national star.

“Josh was a national star as an amateur, and he won his Commonwealth Games gold medal at the Hydro, so we wanted to bring him back to Glasgow and it had to be the right time.

“This is a very exciting fight to take back to Scotland’s biggest city. I want to bring him round to different places and there are good arenas around Scotland, and I want to showcase him there as well.”

McGuigan acknowledges that it is potentially perilous taking this fight on so early in Taylor’s development, with two unbeaten records on the line. But he has faith that his fighter’s superior class will see him through, making the reward worth the risk.

“I have no concerns about taking this fight,” he said.

“It’s a test I’m sure but all the world champions at this weight are very good. They can punch, they can box, they can take a shot, they have gears they can go through at any stage in the fight, so we have to be able to beat guys like that or we’re not going to take Josh where we expect him to go.

“There’s been the argument put to me that we should have waited and let these guys win a substantial title then let them fight for more money. Yeah, you can do it that way, but there’s absolutely no harm letting them fight at this level either as they are both going to go on and do decent things I believe.”

The one thing that Taylor cannot afford to do, says McGuigan, is rise to the expected bating from the opposite corner, or take the insults that have been directed at him and his family previously by Davies too seriously.

“He needs to do it intelligently,” McGuigan added. “He has a tendency to be impetuous at times. He’s a wee bit hot-headed in the sense that if people bate him and wind him up he’s been known to bite so he’s got to control that a bit and he’s got to remain calm because this guy’s going to be very dangerous, especially in the opening rounds. He’s got to remain calm and use his boxing skills and then release his power.”