By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – After Daniel Jacobs’ last two fights, the trainers of Gennady Golovkin and Luis Arias have claimed Jacobs owned a significant weight advantage during those bouts.

Maciej Sulecki isn’t the least bit concerned about Jacobs being bigger than him when the opening bell rings Saturday night at Barclays Center. Poland’s Sulecki, who’s slightly taller than Jacobs, expects to weigh more than Jacobs, at least 180 pounds, once their bout begins in Brooklyn.

“I’ll be bigger,” Sulecki said through a translator before a press conference Thursday in Manhattan. “Everybody that thought I’m small, no, I’m bigger than Jacobs. You’ll see in the ring that I’m bigger.”

Sulecki’s last three fights have been contested at or slightly above the super welterweight limit of 154 pounds. He has mostly fought at or around the middleweight limit of 160 during his seven-year pro career, though, even as high as the super middleweight limit of 168.

“I’m not concerned about [the weight],” Sulecki said. “Again, whatever. I look at me. I’m not looking at my opponent. He can fight at 180, 190 – whatever. I’ll be at a good weight. I’m looking at me, only at me.”

The 28-year-old Sulecki (26-0, 10 KOs) officially weighed in at 159.2 pounds Friday afternoon at Barclays Center. The 31-year-old Jacobs was 159.6 pounds when he stepped on the New York State Athletic Commission’s scale.

They’ll have approximately 33 hours from the time they weighed in until their bout begins to rehydrate and add weight.

“I don’t think it’s gonna be a huge factor,” Jacobs said when asked about a potential weight advantage during a recent conference call. “I mean, he fluctuates up and down, so he’s very comfortable, I would presume, fighting at middleweight. I wouldn’t think it would be a drastic difference. Like he said, he’s gonna be in there about the same weight as I’m gonna be in there. So it’s really no different.

“It’s really all about skill. Weight shouldn’t really be a factor inside the ring anyway, because Muhammad Ali once said, ‘If you can’t hit what you can’t see, then, you know, it doesn’t make a difference anyway.’ And that’s what I look forward to proving on April 28th, is that I have the skills to pay the bills. It’s not anything to do with weight or weight advantage. It’s gonna be strictly what I possess internally.”

HBO will televise the 12-round, 160-pound battle between Jacobs and Sulecki as the main event of a “World Championship Boxing” doubleheader Saturday night (10 p.m. ET/PT). Brooklyn’s Jarrell Miller (20-0-1, 18 KOs) and France’s Johann Duhaupas (37-4, 24 KOs) will open the two-bout broadcast in a 12-round heavyweight fight.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for krikya360.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.