Vasyl Lomachenko is the best fighter since Muhammad Ali, says promoter Bob Arum

The 29-year-old Ukrainian will take to the ring at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night to defend his WBO world super-featherweight title against Guillermo Rigondeaux

Lomachenko has been tipped to beat Rigondeaux in Saturday's fight (Getty)

Vasyl Lomachenko is the best fighter to grace the sport since Muhammad Ali, says promoter Bob Arum.

The 29-year-old Ukrainian will take to the ring at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night to defend his WBO world super-featherweight title against Guillermo Rigondeaux, holder of the WBA super-bantamweight crown.

This will be the first time that two double Olympic champions have faced off in a professional right.

Arum, who has worked was the likes of Roberto Duran, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao throughout his promoting career, has said he’s never seen a boxer like Lomachenko since the “the Greatest”.

"I've never seen a fighter as technically perfect as him," Arum told the BBC.

"I am telling you without any reservation that Lomachenko is the greatest fighter I have seen since Muhammad Ali.

"For me to take a modicum of credit would not be correct.

"I'm not going to have any real part of it except to get him the fights necessary so that people acclaim him when he retires as the greatest fighter of all time and mention him in the same breath as Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson and those types."


 Lomachenko won a world title in just his third professional fight 
 (Getty)

Former four-weight world champion Roy Jones Jr has called Lomachenko-Rigondeaux "the best professional fight ever made”.

With two Olympic gold medals from the 2008 and 2012 Games, an amateur record of 396 wins to just one defeat and a number of broken records to his name, Lomachenko is tipped to beat Rigondeaux – a fighter eight years his senior.

Rigondeaux, 37, has jumped two-weight classes to take the fight. He won gold for Cuba at the 2000 and 2004 Olympic Games.