Barry McGuigan believes Josh Taylor is ready to take Ricky Burns' crown and declare himself the king of Scottish boxing.

The hotly-tipped Edinburgh fighter is shaping up for his biggest test yet when he takes on London light-welterweight prospect Ohara Davies at Glasgow's Braehead Arena on Saturday.

The Scot's manager McGuigan is predicting a two-million strong TV audience will tune in for the bout when it is screened live by Channel 5.

And he says that will give the 26-year-old the perfect platform to really announce himself to the Scottish public.

McGuigan said: "Each fight is acceleration. After five fights he won the Commonwealth title and we have been very aggressive with him.

"He's been on three world title bouts and had national TV coverage in the States in his seventh fight 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."

Burns - who was at Braehead to watch both Taylor and his friend Davies limber up at a public work-out on Wednesday - relinquished his WBA super-lightweight title to Julius Indongo back in April.

Now aged 34, his reign as Scotland's top puncher appears to be coming to an end - but McGuigan is backing his man to take over the throne from the country's first three-weight world champion.

"I think that it's important Scotland has a big star," he said. "Throughout the late 90's and through to the mid-2000s, you had Scott Harrison. 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 Josh 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."

Taylor has been engaged in a long-running Twitter feud with Davies.

That has helped swell ticket sales but his first headline show as a pro outside of his home city is not expected to sell-out the 4,000-capacity venue.

McGuigan, though, hopes it will not be long before he is having to book bigger arenas to squeeze in all those who want to catch his rising star in action.

"That's our aim, that's our objective," he said. "You know how parochial it is, even in towns you can have two different teams, and 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 in Glasgow, 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."

However, McGuigan has warned Taylor that he needs to keep his emotions in check on Saturday or his perfect nine-fight record will come under threat.

He said: "Some of his sparring sessions have been fantastic against really good guys, strong guys, middleweights even. We can't get light welters to stay with him, even middleweights don't want to come back after a couple of sessions.

"But he needs to do it intelligently. 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."