Felix Verdejo looks great but question remains: Can he fight?

It could be fair to say the apprenticeship of Felix Verdejo is over, and it was quite a successful one.

Hall of Famer Felix Trinidad embraced the 2012 Puerto Rican Olympian and encouraged Verdejo as he has run roughshod over the opening portion of his early professional ledger. Verdejo is 17-0 with 13 knockouts and has largely been unchallenged in his career. He has been past six rounds only once and has scored 10 knockouts in three rounds or less.

His promoter, Bob Arum of Top Rank, is convinced Verdejo has the ability to become the company's biggest pay-per-view star. He possesses a rare charisma, as well as a telegenic fighting style.

There remains only one question about the 22-year-old, who attracted a massive throng to a workout at the Bronx Cultural Festival in New York last month, and it's kind of a big one:

Can he fight?

Verdejo makes his HBO debut Saturday when he takes on unbeaten lightweight Ivan Najera in what figures to be an outstanding show from the Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York. Featherweight champion Nicholas Walters defends his title against Miguel Marriaga in the main event, a bout in which the fighters are a combined 45-0 with 39 knockouts.

Top Rank vice president Carl Moretti said circumstance more than anything led to Verdejo's appearance on the HBO portion of Saturday's card.

For years, Top Rank has promoted a show in New York on the Saturday before the city's annual Puerto Rican Day parade, which this year is on Sunday. It was a way to help build middleweight champion Miguel Cotto's visibility.

Top Rank was holding Saturday's date for a potential Cotto fight, but when he spurned its offer and signed a promotional deal with fledgling Roc Nation Sports instead, Top Rank simply put Verdejo on the card in his place.

"If this wasn't the Puerto Rican Day weekend, I don't think necessarily he would have been in this situation," Moretti said.

Like many highly regarded young stars, Verdejo has been matched carefully during his early years as a professional. Top Rank has for decades been the best in the industry at developing young fighters into champions, a testament to the matchmaking abilities of Hall of Famer Bruce Trampler and Brad Goodman.

Verdejo, though, hasn't really fought anyone who posed much of a threat, or who hit him back with any kind of conviction. Though Najera is 16-0 with eight knockouts, he's not a devastating puncher. He will, though, hit back, and that will be a new experience for Verdejo. He has passed every test so far and is supremely confident as he heads into the biggest fight of his career.

"Top Rank knows how to develop fighters, and if they think I'm ready for this, I trust them," Verdejo told Yahoo Sports.

If he pans out, and the guess here is he will, he'll be a boxer-puncher who isn't looking to brawl but won't shy away from a fight.

Arum signed an inordinate number of 2012 Olympians, and thinks Verdejo has the ability to top all of them. That's saying something considering one of his 2012 Olympians, featherweight Vasyl Lomachenko, is already a world champion.

But while Lomachenko, a two-time gold medalist, is far more advanced as a fighter than Verdejo, he doesn't have a tenth of Verdejo's charisma or drawing power.

"We put him in Puerto Rico and boom, he sells 6,000 tickets right off the bat just like that," Arum said of Verdejo. "There aren't a lot of guys like that."

Arum sees Verdejo being the latest in a long string of pay-per-view attractions to come through Top Rank in the last 30 years. After Sugar Ray Leonard retired, the company signed Oscar De La Hoya and turned him into the biggest attraction in the sport.

Then it was Floyd Mayweather, and Cotto, Erik Morales and Manny Pacquiao did well on pay-per-view.

Selling pay-per-views is difficult even in the best of circumstances. And with so much boxing on free television, it's even harder. There aren't a lot of guys other than Mayweather, Pacquiao, Cotto and Canelo Alvarez who can do it now.

"We have four guys I'm really looking at as having potential to become legitimate pay-per-view stars," Arum said. "Verdejo is No. 1. If I had to place a bet on any fighter from that Class of 2012 becoming a big pay-per-view star, it would be him. But we also have Gilbert Ramirez, the super middleweight from Mexico; [Oscar] Valdez and Jose Ramirez, all of whom have a decent shot to do it. And you might even throw in Jesse Hart.

"They all have that marketability. The question from a pay-per-view standpoint is, will people plunk down money in sufficient numbers? A few fighters, the answer is yes. Most, it's no. Andre Ward is a great, great fighter, but I don't see him as a pay-per-view star. [Wladimir] Klitschko is the heavyweight champion, a terrific fighter, but he's not a pay-per-view star. Mayweather is not the most exciting, slugging fighter, but he's a huge [PPV] star. There are a lot of things that go into it."

Verdejo's early knockout record could be a mirage because he hasn't fought a lot of top opposition. Moretti, though, believes there is legitimate power there.

Verdejo believes he's a complete boxer and not simply a slugger.

"My kind of style is, the less I get hit, the better," he said. "I want to be the one doing the hitting."

Asked if he wanted a style similar to the defensive wizardy that has led Mayweather to a 48-0 mark, Verdejo chuckled.

"Not really," he said. "He has his style, and it's a great one, and I have my own style. I want to do my offense and not be there to get hit."

He's far from a finished product, but we'll now a lot more after he fights Najera.

Saturday's bout could turn out to be a coming out party of sorts for a fun, charismatic fighter. Or it could just be an indicator that he needs more time to develop.

Arum, whose track record is as good as there is at developing young stars, is convinced Verdejo's name is going to be on everyone's lips Sunday morning.