THEY call Lee Selby the Welsh Floyd Mayweather, so let’s hope promoter Eddie Hearn has a good game plan ready for making sure he really emulates his hero.

Because Selby, 27 and now set for a first world title crack, is on the path to greatness after his scintillating destruction of Joel Brunker at the O2 Arena on Saturday.

His is an unusual tale and certainly not one that compares to that of Mayweather, the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world and probably the best for a generation.

Mayweather most certainly wasn’t fighting in the US equivalent of the Pill Millennium Centre as a 24-year old and the jet-flying, limousine-riding fighter whose nickname is literally ‘money’ has also never earned a world title shot and headlined a show at one of the biggest arenas in the country only to then travel home on a Megabus, as Selby did on Sunday. “Shrapnel Selby,” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it now does it?

But make no mistake, the Barry boxer who has been working in Newport’s hidden sporting gem, St Joseph’s ABC, since he was a child, is the real deal and he’s going to become a major, major star of the sport.

He might not have the same box office personality, but Selby has the skill set to comfortably eclipse Carl Froch as the top guy in British boxing.

Indeed, trite as it sounds to write in a column in the South Wales Argus, Selby can be Britain’s best boxer since Joe Calzaghe, with the caveat that we really need to watch this space with Anthony Joshua. The duo could be the subjects of many discussions in the future as to who is superior, exactly like fight fans used to attempt to rank Calzaghe in comparison to Lennox Lewis.

Selby will get a crack at the IBF world featherweight title in the New Year and his growing group of admirers will have little doubt he’s set to be successful if he can maintain the dazzling standards he exhibited at the weekend.

Speed, fantastic footwork and a seemingly impenetrable defence, Selby makes the hardest sport in the world seem not only natural, but easy. He can do things other fighters simply can’t. And all that without ever getting flustered during a fight or losing his strategy due to a bout of red mist – he says, pointing the finger at a certain Mr Cleverly!

Selby is a man with a plan, a career that has been mapped out to military precision by wily manager Chris Sanigar, an encyclopaedia of boxing knowledge who knows how to take a talent and turn him into a world champion.

Considering Selby is with the promoter who always wants tomorrow’s fights yesterday (I’m not complaining), Sanigar has shown incredible restraint in building up his charge and Selby should be applauded for allowing himself to be guided slowly and surely by his manager and trainer.

But then, life can bring perspective can’t it?

If Lee Selby and his younger brother and amateur star Andrew Selby appear too cool for school in the ring, it’s probably got something to do with the gut-wrenching pain they’ve endured outside of it.

How upset can you get a world title shot taking longer than you’d hope, if you’ve endured genuine tragedy?

Both Lee and Andrew credit older brother Michael as the reason they even took up boxing and his death to a freak accident five years ago still looms large for Selby, his family and friends.

“Michael was the first one of us to start boxing, he was the one who got us involved in the sport and honouring his memory is a huge motivation for me and for Andrew,” Selby told me when he opened up on the subject for the first time in 2012.

“He was a role model to us and I think about him every time I step into the ring.”

Michael was a huge boxing enthusiast and as a student of the sport, he’d have relished Selby’s all action display at the O2 Arena.

Many within the sport have suggested Selby’s biggest asset being his superb defence is a problem, in terms of becoming a box office fighter, but becoming the darling of students of the sweet science is no bad place to start when you’re hitting the highest levels of sport.

Because the fact is, Selby is never going to be like Mayweather – they are chalk and cheese in terms of personality - even though the pair are friends, Selby taken to Mayweather’s gym by Sanigar several times.

“That was an absolute dream come true, he was very gracious and I really enjoyed my time over there, he talked with me and gave me some advice, watched me spar, that’s about as good as it gets,” Selby said of boxing’s richest man.

While the American is brash and outgoing, Selby is quiet and introverted. And instead of coming from the brashest country on earth, he comes from Wales, or as it is better known in the US, “near England.”

So yet more parallels with Calzaghe, but with a top team behind him and the skills to compete with any featherweight fight in the world, it won’t take Selby as long to receive the widespread recognition Calzaghe went without for so long. A star is born.