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Michael Zerafa says not even swords and sledgehammers will help Jeff Horn in their middleweight rematch in Brisbane.
Michael Zerafa insists he has all angles covered against Jeff Horn in what is billed as the most significant domestic boxing bout in more than a decade.
"With my reach and our game plan he can't do what he wants to do regardless of what he brings," Zerafa told AAP.
"He can bring two sledgehammers or swords in his hands, but if he can't hit me, he can't touch me."
Promoters rate the middleweight contest as the most important all-Australian fight since Anthony Mundine's first bout with Danny Green in 2006.
Going on the line at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre will be Zerafa's WBA and WBO regional titles.
The bout has massive consequences for both fighters.
A lucrative domestic superfight with rising world ranked junior middleweight Tim Tszyu and a world title fight are among the possibilities for the victor.
The vanquished is certain to slide down the pecking order for prime fights in 2020.
In an upset, Victorian Zerafa stopped Horn in the ninth round of their first fight in Bendigo in August.
This time he starts the clear betting favourite despite taking on Horn in his home city, where the former WBO welterweight champion has never lost a professional fight.
After Tuesday's weigh-in where Horn was slightly lighter than his opponent, he said he felt more comfortable and was in better shape than his first fight at middleweight
"'Even though I won't be a big middleweight, I'll be a strong middleweight," Horn told AAP.
He said the trash talk from the Zerafa camp hadn't bothered him and he was using it as extra motivation.
Zerafa has questioned whether Horn can make major changes to his style and said it would be "dumb" for the Queenslander to do so as he wouldn't have had long enough to master them.
Both camps have stressed the importance of shaking their opponent's confidence early on.
"As soon as the first right hand lands the game changes and I don't think he wants to be in there copping big right hands and left hooks all night," Zerafa said.
Zerafa continues to see a sports psychologist and promoter Dean Lonergan wondered how the Victorian's confidence would be affected if Horn hurt him in the early rounds.
"Michael is very much a confidence fighter so it's going to be fascinating to see the confidence he takes into this fight and how that confidence lasts when I think he realises in rounds two and three that (Horn) is a different fighter," Lonergan said.
Horn has been relaxed in the build-up with Zerafa seemingly more intense, but his camp denied the Queenslander's assertion their fighter was an angry man.
"Everyone thinks he's angry. He's very relaxed, he's mentally even in a better place than he was for the first fight," Zerafa's trainer Blake Caparello said.
