By Gregory Strangrit

John David Jackson, the trainer for Sergey Kovalev (30-1-1, 26KOs), is still very confident his boxing defeated Andre Ward (31-0, 15KOs) by a margin of 8 rounds to 4 last month at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Ward won a twelve round unanimous decision over Kovalev to capture the IBF, WBA, WBO light heavyweight titles.

The three official judges scored it for Ward by one point, 114-113. Ward was down in the second round. The outcome has created a lot of controversy where some have called it a controversial decision.

Kovalev has exercised an immediate rematch clause from their bout agreement. That second fight will happen in the first half of 2017.

Jackson was happy with Kovalev's performance, but he felt the Russian puncher could been in better condition in the late rounds. He grew tired in the final six rounds and couldn't pick up the pace when Ward began to rally down the stretch. He also felt Kovalev may have let Ward off the hook when he was down and hurt in the second.

Ward believes he did enough to win on the judges' cards and saw no reason for any controversy. Jackson had his fighter winning 116-111 with the 10-8 round for knockdown.

"All Kovalev needs in a rematch is to be better in terms of conditioning," Jackson said. "It would be nice to press the gas pedal to the floor in the last two rounds. But I still think that Kovalev won. He has won the first five of the six rounds. In the second half it was 3-3. Ward managed to survive and went on to win a few rounds. He did not win all six of the rounds [in the second half], but he showed character and showed that he was a champion, when he came back in the fight and made it interesting. This makes for an interesting rematch."

Gregory Stangrit covers boxing for Allboxing.ru