The welterweight division has long been home to boxing royalty. From Sugar Ray Robinson to Kid Gavilan to Jose Napoles to Sugar Ray Leonard to Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, with many others in between, some of the sport’s greatest fighters have been welterweights.Keith Thurman and Shawn Porter will square off Saturday at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., on CBS for the WBA welterweight title in a match that, on paper, is the best to be made so far this year.

Thurman is 26-0 with 22 knockouts and has been on the fringes of stardom for some time. Yet, he hasn’t had that one breakthrough moment, largely because he hasn’t had that big-name opponent standing across from him in the ring.

A year ago, about a month after Mayweather defeated Pacquiao, Mayweather responded to questions about a fight against Thurman by suggesting that Thurman go fight Errol Spence Jr.

While Spence was then, as he is now, an elite prospect, he wasn’t nearly the polished product he is today. Spence has the kind of ability to end up in the same echelon as those great welterweights.

It was just one of the many pitfalls in Thurman’s rise to the top. He’s an electric fighter in the ring, a good boxer with far better than average power who is well spoken and eager to fight.

But boxing is as much about who you’ve fought as about your record, and with no opportunity to test himself against the welterweights regarded as the elite – Mayweather, Pacquiao, Timothy Bradleyand Juan Manuel Marquez – Thurman has had to take a back seat.

The fight with Porter is kind of a defining line in his career. Porter is 26-1-1 with 16 knockouts, and a win will make Thurman the de facto No. 1 welterweight.

They were supposed to fight earlier this year, but Thurman was involved in an auto accident that pushed the bout back three months. Thurman said he’s fully healthy and not upset by the delay.

“We’re both really getting what we wanted out of this fight,” Thurman said. “It was worth the wait. I’ve had ups and downs. I’ve had injuries several times throughout my career. My biggest layoff was about 14 months. So it is what it is. It’s nothing to really complain about. We both feel good. … I’ve had plenty of time to recover from my accident, get back in the camp and do what I need to do to perform [Saturday].”

That the fight is set for CBS in primetime would seem to be a plus for the winner, particularly if, as expected, it is a compelling bout.

The ratings for boxing on network television haven’t panned out the way many thought thus far this year. NBC had a strong start with Premier Boxing Champions in 2015, but the PBC’s 2016 ratings have been abysmal by any standard.

Last week’s PBC card on NBC, which featured a major upset when Joe Smith knocked out Andrzej Fonfara in the first round, had a total audience of 1.32 million. When Thurman defeated Robert Guerrero on March 7, 2015, on NBC in the PBC’s first broadcast, the show had 1.376 million viewers among the 18-49-year-old demographic alone and drew 3.374 million viewers overall.

In its other bouts on network television this year, the PBC drew 1.26 million viewers on NBC on April 16 and 1.619 million for a card on Fox on April 30.

Thurman is one of the most exciting fighters in the sport, and there will be plenty of weight on his shoulders Saturday to put on a good show with Porter to help turn the ratings situation around.

They’re also friends with each other, but Thurman said it won’t impact the way he competes.

“We’ve come across a situation in the amateurs where I’ve had to compete against sparring partners,” Thurman said. “So there really is nothing awkward in it. If anything, there’s a very, very cool factor, man. To be really honest, there’s an extremely just super-cool factor that, you know, I remember this dude when he was a teenager. He remembers me when I was a teenager. “And here we are, going to be fighting on CBS, opening up the show [in] primetime. If our battle is going to be the battle that they see from the last time they aired boxing, which was Muhammad Ali, this is history in the making. We both have legacies, we both have dreams that we want to live. And if it means getting through each other, then so be it.”

Promoters have tried to compare the bout to the 1981 epic battle between Leonard and Thomas Hearns. While there are some similarities, by that point, both Leonard and Hearns were clearly established as among the greatest welterweights to ever have lived and were clearly on paths to the Hall of Fame.Neither Thurman nor Porter is that far advanced, but a bout like Saturday’s could be the impetus for them. It’s particularly true for Thurman, whose biggest name on his résumé is Guerrero. Porter, at least, has been in with Kell Brook (who handed him his only loss) and Adrien Broner.

A great performance in front of a primetime network television audience could be the catalyst Thurman needs to finally vindicate all the hype he’s received.

“Both guys are at the top of the welterweight division,” Leonard said. “The only thing that’s different is that me and Tommy were so well known by sports fans. We were on TV a lot, and that’s what built our names and gave people the chance to see us so much. And that’s what they’re doing now with the PBC and the shows being on network TV. This could be a fight like ours. Who knows? But I do know that the fans are waiting on this fight.”

They’ll be waiting a lot more on the next one if Thurman comes through the way he has in the past.

This bout with Porter provides Thurman with everything he needs to prove he deserves to be regarded as the latest in a long line of welterweight greats.