17-year-old boxing prodigy has what it takes to be the next Canelo or Floyd

After signing a slew of the world’s best fighters in the last year, including lineal heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, unified bantamweight champion Naoya Inoue and unified super lightweight king Josh Taylor, Top Rank may have the most talented roster of any promoter in the sport.

Top Rank also promotes champions Vasiliy Lomachenko, Teofimo Lopez, Jose Ramirez, Terence Crawford and Artur Beterbiev. They’re among the greatest fighters in the sport.

But perhaps the most talented, and the one with the greatest potential to be the next Canelo Alvarez or Floyd Mayweather, is a 17year-old whose afternoons are spent not in the gym but behind his computer completing his high school st u di es.

Xander Zayas isn’t just a guy with a lot of talent, he’s got the personality, poise and charisma to also become a major ticketsel l er.

He’s 2-0 as a pro and on Saturday in Atlantic City, he’ll fight Corey Champion in a four-rounder (6:30 p.m. ET, ESPN+ ).

He could easily be preparing for the Olympics now, but a rule change increased the qualifying age to 19, meaning he is too young. And while he’d be old enough for the 2024 games, when he’d be the ripe old age of 21, his manager, Peter Kahn, thought there was too much risk involved in waiting.

“We could have said, ‘OK, let’s be patient and wait for 2024 and prepare for that,’but let me ask you a question: Are you certain there will even be boxing in the Olympics in 2024?” Kahn said.

It’s a good point, as boxing was on the chopping block for the 2020 Olympics, so there are few guarantees for 2024. Besides, Zayas had already had 136 amateur fights and Kahn and his team weren’t sure what the benefit was to adding a couple of hundred more.

Everyone who saw him, from trainer Javiel Centeno to Kahn to Hall of Fame matchmaker Bruce Trampler, believed him to not only be physically ready for the professional game but mentally and emotionally ready, as well.

Trampler is arguably the best in history at developing fighters, and he earned his Hall of Fame stripes by building Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather. Kahn felt there was no one better to pick the right fights for Zayas than Trampler and fellow Top Rank matchmaker Br ad Goodman.

Trampler is not one to effusively praise a young athlete before he or she has accomplished much. But he is in agreement about Zayas.

“I really like his chances,” Trampler said. “[He] could turn out to be very good.”

He’s fighting at welterweight now, but Kahn thinks that when he’s physically mature when he’s 20 or 21, he’ll be a middleweight.