EVERYTHING is bang on target for next week's WBO world super-middleweight title defence against American-based Egyptian Kabary Salem in Edinburgh and I've seldom been more confident of putting on a big display.

Training has gone superbly, I've done all the sparring, the weight has come off easily, I'm just above the super-middleweight limit and there have been no niggles and no sniffles.

I'll be going up to Scotland next Wednesday for the press conference and the weigh-in and I feel totally relaxed.

I've been through the routine so many times that I genuinely don't even think about a big fight very much beforehand.

All the pressure in the build-up will be on my opponent because he has never faced a fight as big as this before.

I will get a few nerves come the night once the adrenalin kicks in, but that's how it should be, because you don't perform at your best if you are too relaxed.

The pressure on a boxer, I believe, is bigger once he steps into the ring than on any other sportsman because once he's in there, a boxer is alone and has no team-mates to call on for help.

That's why a boxer has to be mentally tough, mentally right on the night and I know I will be. This is my first fight since February and I have to re-establish myself as champion and redefine myself. I have to win and win in style and make a statement to the boxing world.

That means as good a fighter as he is, Kabary Salem is going to take a beating. I am determined to do a number on him and I will knock him out, make no mistake.

Then it's bigger fish and bigger targets, maybe Antonio Tarver, maybe Glen Johnson, who knows.

Tarver has signed up to meet mandatory WBC light-heavyweight challenger Paul Briggs of Australia on December 18, probably in Las Vegas.

It's disappointing he did not choose to face me as I'm sure he could have got out of the mandatory defence had he wanted to and my promoter, Frank Warren, told me he had made a bigger offer to Tarver than the one he took to face Briggs.

Nevertheless he is reported to be getting $3m for the fight with the Australian getting $1m, so it's not a bad pay night.

I'm sure Tarver will win and then perhaps I'll get a chance to earn some big money and become a double world champion.

Meanwhile two of my former world title opponents, Mario Veit of Germany and American Charles Brewer, are due to fight for the WBO interim super-middleweight title next month and I can only see that going one way.

Brewer is possibly the best all-round fighter I've faced. He can both give and take a punch and isn't a bad boxer.

I think he'll prove a league above Veit, whom I demolished in a round, though I didn't really get much of a chance to assess his ability as he was soon scraping himself up off the floor.

He hadn't lost before meeting me and hasn't lost since, though his decision over Salem last time was a joke. I saw the tapes and gave Salem ten of the 12 rounds, but in Germany even that's not enough.

I think Veit is a pretty mediocre, upright fighter and I feel Brewer will have too much in his armoury for him, wearing Veit down before stopping him in the later rounds.

Frank Warren last week paid me the compliment of calling me the best British super-middleweight since the war, putting me above Nigel Benn, Michael Watson, Chris Eubank and Steve Collins at their best.

Obviously, I have to agree with him, but I'd love to have been around when they were and been part of that whole fight scene besides which, I could have made a lot of money.

I remember the Benn/Eubank wars, the Collins/Benn fights and the Eubank/Watson battles and they inspired me as a 17-year-old amateur and made me want to emulate them.

I eventually met and beat Eubank of course and Benn was kind enough to say to me on one occasion "you managed to do in 15 seconds what I couldn't do in three contests" and that's put Eubank down.

Nevertheless, I believe Benn was the hardest puncher of the four, though he was beaten twice in six and four rounds by 'Celtic Warrior' Collins, whom I believe would have been tailor-made for me with his come forward style.

I also believe the tragic Watson would have been my toughest customer.

He knocked out Benn in six rounds and dropped a very, very controversial decision to Eubank and was well ahead in the return before he took the battering which ended the fight in the 12th and final round, ending his career and almost ending his life.

He was in a coma for forty days and had six brain surgery operations and was left partially paralysed - permanently.

After that he proved himself just as great a fighter out of the ring as he was in it.