By Keith Idec

Vasyl Lomanchenko didn’t dismiss Bob Arum’s assessment of him as mere promotional propaganda.

The highly skilled Ukrainian appreciates Arum’s perspective because the Hall-of-Fame promoter has spent parts of six decades immersed in boxing. So when Arum said he hasn’t seen a technician like Lomachenko since a young Muhammad Ali, whom Arum promoted, Lomachenko took the compliment as a demanding standard to which he must perform.

“It will give me another motivation, because a lot of people look at that and say that’s not true,” Lomachenko said Monday during a conference call through his manager/translator, Egis Klimas. “This will give me a lot of motivation. This gives me a lot of extra work in my training. I have to do what Bob is telling [people] and what Bob is believing in me. I don’t have a chance to make any mistakes. I’ve gotta stay there, concentrated and motivated, to prove that Bob is right.”

Lomanchenko’s next chance to impress comes Saturday night. The two-time Olympic gold medalist will defend his WBO world super featherweight championship against unbeaten Jamaican Nicholas Walters (26-0-1, 21 KOs) in an HBO “World Championship Boxing” main event at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas.

The intriguing Lomachenko-Walters fight will air live after a replay of the controversial Andre Ward-Sergey Kovalev light heavyweight title fight at 10:35 p.m. ET. Ward (31-0, 15 KOs), of Hayward, California, defeated Russia’s Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KOs) by unanimous decision in an extremely competitive, foul-filled, 12-round fight Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Lomachenko-Walters is the headliner of the 2000th event of Arum’s promotional career – a high-stakes clash even Arum, who’ll turn 85 next month, cannot wait to watch.

“Vasyl Lomachenko is the best fighter, technically the best fighter, that I’ve seen since the early Muhammad Ali,” Arum said earlier on the call. “I mean, there’s nobody that I’ve seen [like him]. There have been a lot of great fighters, technical fighters. [Alexis] Arguello is one. Floyd Mayweather, certainly. Manny [Pacquiao]. But nobody, nobody with the skills that Vasyl Lomachenko has.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.