By Gregory Stangrit

Russian boxing legend Kostya Tszyu was not very happy with the performance of Sergey Kovalev from last Saturday night in Las Vegas. He lost a very close twelve round unanimous decision to Andre Ward at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Kovalev (30-1, 26KOs) suffered the first loss of his career, with Ward capturing his WBA, WBO, IBF light heavyweight titles.

"To my great regret, Kovalev lost the fight with Andre Ward," said Tszyu. "Sergey was a cool kid, we had very good relations. So I really wanted him to win all four of the major titles. This is my first Russian successor, who had only one step to go before get one final title to become the absolute world champion. I was very much rooting for him. I took great pleasure in watching how he won his fights. But in the fight with Ward something went wrong."

A lot of people are calling Kovalev's loss "a robbery." Ward, who was knocked down in the second round, won the fight on all three official scorecards by one point, 114-113.

Tszyu would not go that far. He remembers his first loss and then came back to unify the entire junior welterweight division by winning the IBF, WBA, WBC world titles.

"I would not be so straightforward [to call it a robbery]. If the fight took place in Russia or in neutral territory, Ward would be unlikely to get such assessment from the judges. But the fight was held at the home of Ward, where he is a legend, the idol of millions. Therefore it was necessary for Sergey to win in a manner where no one would have even the minimal amount of doubt about his superiority," Tszyu said.

"To be honest, I did not like the previous fight with Sergey in Yekaterinburg. In the confrontation with Isaac Chilemba he did not look as confident as he usual is. It seems to me that he hasn't learned all the lessons from the battlefield, which negatively affected him in the confrontation with Ward."

Tszyu wants Kovalev to stop blaming the referee and the judges, and instead to analyze what he did wrong in the contest and fix his mistakes.

"When I lost my first fight with Vince Phillips in 1997, I then began to search for the reasons in myself [on why I lost] and didn't spend time addressing the judges and the referee. I asked myself the question: "What did I do wrong?". And in the end I found my weaknesses, worked hard on them, and regained all of the titles. I changed a lot, especially mentally, and began to think very different in several aspects," Tszyu said.

"I am convinced that Kovalev could do the same. He needs to understand himself, and not to look for reasons to analyze the judges. If he does that, then he will find those mistakes that prevented him from winning early on against Ward [when he put him down]. He will analyze [the mistakes], change something in himself and therefore he won't give away any opportunities [to get beat] - neither to the Americans or the judges or the critics."

Gregory Stangrit covers boxing for Allboxing.ru