Rolando Romero and Teofimo Lopez are set to square off on Saturday in a battle for the WBA welterweight title, and esteemed trainer and fight analyst Teddy Atlas has provided his prediction for the fight.

‘Rolly’ got his hands on the WBA welterweight crown 15 months ago in an upset win over Ryan Garcia at Times Square in New York, but the Las Vegas-native is yet to fight since, following collapsed talks with Manny Pacquiao, Devin Haney and Jack Catterall.

This weekend, he finally attempts a first defence, as he collides with two-division world champion and welterweight debutant Lopez, who lost his WBO super-lightweight title in a one-sided defeat to Shakur Stevenson at the beginning of the year.

On his podcast, ‘The Fight with Teddy Atlas’, the former Mike Tyson coach forecasted that Lopez will bounce back with a win and put an early end to Romero’s reign, favouring the natural talent and instincts of ‘The Takeover’.

“I’m going with Teofimo. I’m going to go with his talent. I think that, at the end of the day, he is more talented [than Romero] and more instinctual, I don’t know if that showed too much in the Shakur Stevenson fight but that style and that talent of Stevenson is pretty different and very difficult.”

Romero-Lopez takes place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, with Cuba’s Yoenli Hernandez hoping to tee up a shot at Denzel Bentley’s WBO middleweight title by defeating Argentina’s Francisco Daniel Veron in the standout bout of the undercard.