After a twelve month delay, Lee McGregor and Isaac Lowe are in Saudi Arabia and just days away from finally settling their rivalry.

The featherweights will meet on the undercard of the unified heavyweight title rematch between Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury.

Lowe is a very close friend of Fury and McGregor won’t be surprised if being surrounded by scores of team members, friends and family in Riyadh results in the already fiery Lowe loudly talking up his chances this week.

Whilst McGregor, 14-1-1 (11 KOs), is expecting Lowe, 25-2-3 (8 KOs), to put on a public display of confidence, he thinks that, privately, he knows just how difficult a task he faces on Saturday.

“You can tell. You can see it. Even in videos. I saw one other day, someone was like, ‘Three ways you beat Lee McGregor.’ He doesn't even believe it himself. You can tell he's just blethering, just saying,” McGregor told The Ring.

“I really do genuinely deep down believe he knows he's in for a hard, hard night and he's maybe trying to convince himself that it's going to be easy work for him or whatever but deep, deep down he knows.”

McGregor knows that this weekend’s fight presents him with the chance to get back to the the kind of level he was operating at four years ago when he blazed through the British scene and destroyed Karim Guerfi inside a round to win the European title. He has prepared accordingly, returning hime to Edinburgh where he has trained at the state of the art Meadowbank Sports Centre and altering his training schedule to suit the expected fight time in Riyadh.

He has also been keeping an eye on Lowe’s arrangements in Morecambe and thinks that his decision to stay at home in cold Lancashire rather than joining Fury and the team in Malta shows just how seriously he is treating the fight.

“He could have easily been living it up in, I think, Malta,” McGregor said. “ A nice bit of sun, all the luxury, the chefs and all that that Tyson would have had. He decided to stay at home because that's not going to be his best chance of being the best version of himself if he was to be out in Malta just sort of chomping about in the background of Tyson.

“He wouldn't have been able to get sparring or nothing like that. So you've got to respect that and that's why I feel like we are going to get the best Isaac.

“But like I keep saying, the best Lee McGregor beats the best Isaac Lowe every day of the week so I just need to stick to what I need to do and I'm more than confident that I'll win this fight.”