Trainer John David Jackson and Sergey Kovalev had a lot of success together, which included unifying three world titles at 175, but the relationship came apart after Kovalev’s second loss to Andre Ward back in 2017. After his split with Jackson, the 35-year-old Kovalev went on to win two straight fights with his new trainer Abror Tursunpulatov, before getting stopped by Eleider Alvarez in early August.
Many believe that those two fights with Ward ruined Kovalev, but according to his former trainer Jackson, Kovalev ruined himself.
“Sergey ruined Sergey. Andre(Ward) just finished the job,” Jackson said. “Listen, you can’t get mad when you got drunk in front of Andre and his trainers. They saw for themselves; he got drunk. You want to blame that on me? That was your fault. You let people know what you do outside of boxing. Whose fault is that? They capitalized on it. They knew that the body was weak.”
While Jackson did not directly say that Kovalev has a drinking issue, he did hint at it. When asked if he thought Kovalev had a problem with alcohol, Jackson had this to say:
“Do I think? Listen, I’m not going to go into what I’ve seen,” Jackson said. “If he wants to say he doesn’t have one, that’s fine. That’s his problem, that’s not mine. As far as boxing, he finished. Because now the aura of invincibility, it’s off. Everybody knows he’s beatable now, so he can kill that. Once he was a bully, he did his thing. Now they know what to do, he’s used goods; he’s done.”