LAS VEGAS — Fernando Vargas Jr. appreciates all that his famous father’s reputation has done to help enhance his boxing career.

The former junior middleweight champion has trained his son since Vargas Jr. took up boxing in his mid-teens and guided him through a brutal business. Vargas Jr. entered the 2014 Las Vegas Golden Gloves tournament with only four amateur bouts and no intention of fighting professionally.

It wasn’t until he won an open-class championship at that event that he seriously considered boxing for a living. Eleven years later, he’ll fight heavily hyped prospect Callum Walsh on a gargantuan stage Saturday night at Allegiant Stadium.

The 10-round junior middleweight bout between Ireland’s Walsh (14-0, 11 KOs) and Las Vegas’ Vargas (17-0, 15 KOs) is Netflix’s co-feature before undisputed super middleweight champ Canelo Alvarez faces fellow four-division champ Terence Crawford in the 12-round main event.

For the younger Vargas, his fight with Walsh isn’t just the highest-profile opportunity imaginable to legitimize himself within a talent-rich junior middleweight division. It’s the unproven prospect’s chance to impressively emerge from the enormous shadow cast by his father, one of the most beloved boxers of his generation.

And then there's younger brother Emiliano, who scored a 42-second KO two months ago on the Xander Zayas-Jorge Garcia undercard in New York.

“It’s difficult,” Vargas Jr. told The Ring. “Not a lotta people have my shoes to fill because you’re in somebody’s shadow. I have the first and last name of my dad. So, everything’s just gonna be a comparison. 'Your dad was already an Olympian. Your dad was already signed to this [promotional company]. Your brothers are like this. Your brother got this knockout.’ I don’t know if I could top Emiliano’s knockout – 40 seconds at MSG. That’s pretty up there. But we all comfortably and respectably know our own lane. I’m comfortable in my own skin and I’m not trying to be my dad. Those are huge shoes to fill.”

Emiliano (15-0, 13 KOs) is generally regarded as the most promising prospect of the three Vargas brothers. The 21-year-old junior welterweight is promoted by Bob Arum’s Top Rank Inc.

“Me and my brothers, we get a lotta respect because of our dad,” Vargas Jr. said. “So, this separates us. Fights like these excite me. I wanna challenge myself. We need more fighters in the fight game that put their [undefeated] records on the line. I’m 17-0, he’s 14-0. You don’t really see too many fighters like that, with the backing of who we’ve got — I know he has Dana White behind him and I have my father pushing for us.

“I wanna be that throwback-style of fighter that puts their record on the line and isn’t afraid of competition. I feel you raise the bar and you raise the standard of competition, a better me will show up every time. So, it’s difficult to be in his shadow per se, but this fight is the steppingstone to break me out of that.”

Vargas Sr. has methodically matched his sons because he took on so much, so soon after competing for the United States at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

“El Feroz” was a world champion by the time he was 21. He beat Ronald “Winky” Wright and Ike Quartey and lost to Felix Trinidad and Oscar De La Hoya by the time he was 24. Vargas fought for the last time when he was just 29.

Vargas Jr. is already 28 as he prepares for what, on paper, is his most difficult fight in four years as a pro.

“My dad always tells me that the mistakes that happened in his career are not gonna happen with ours,” Vargas said. “So the fight fans want us to be fighting Vergil Ortiz and all these guys. There’s a process. There’s different levels. So, of course my dad was rushed. He was 21 years old. He would fight King Kong twice on a Sunday if he had to. That’s the type of fighter my dad was. …

"My dad was a risk-taker. It elevated him as far as the respect with the fight fans. But sometimes I feel he could’ve waited a little longer. But my dad’s a people’s champ. He wouldn’t trade it for the world. My dad could be anywhere, and it’s definitely a blessing that people go out of their way to go greet my dad and go say hi to us.”

Vargas Sr. couldn’t care less about criticism of how he handled the careers of Fernando Jr., Emiliano and Amado, an undefeated junior lightweight (13-0, 6 KOs). He is much more concerned with remaining a constant presence in the personal and professional lives of his sons, the type of father that he never had when he grew up in Oxnard, California.

“What did they say about me? ‘Fernando, they fed him to the lions too quickly.’ Right?,” Vargas Sr. said. “But I still beat five world champions, right? And because I’m taking my time with my kids, [it’s], ‘Oh, they’re only fighting bums.’

"The last guy, [Gonzalo] Coria, that was a real-deal vato. … Since he was a kid, he has hit really, really hard. When people wanna talk about an inflated record, of course, we’re coming up, being the newcomers out there, we’re building the record. This record is not a lie. Everybody is gonna know who Fernando Vargas Jr. is.”