By Vadim Pushkin

Sergey Kovalev (30-1, 26 KOs) is very motivated to get his career back in order in 2017. 

In November, Kovalev suffered his first career defeat when he lost a twelve round unanimous decision to Andre Ward at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. All three judges scored the fight 114-113 for Ward, who was down in the second round. In the process Kovalev lost his IBF, WBA, WBO light heavyweight titles.

Kovalev felt robbed of a victory by the judges and believes Ward won no more than three to four rounds in the fight. He has exercised his right to an immediate rematch and hopes to get Ward back in the ring before June.

Kovalev views the loss as a very beneficial experience. He plans to do everything possible to stop Ward inside the distance in their rematch. The Russian boxer felt that he overtrained in camp and that created some fatigue in the second half of the fight.

"Well, now you will see my [my career] get a second breath, which should give me a boost. This is an invaluable experience. There were three titles, the fourth one we wanted and we were working on [getting it]... but better for this to happen now than later. If this happened to me later it would be worse, because it would happen at a point of time that is more important. It's better to lose than to win like Andre Ward did," Kovalev told Elena Sobol

"Actually, after this fight the entire team was confident that we won. When I heard the decision.... I of course, somewhere deep down, realized that if you don't finish the opponent off ahead of time and it goes the entire twelve rounds - that might be the end result. In the fight I didn't do everything that I could have did. I think I overestimated Ward and did more than I should have done in camp. In the first four rounds I felt fresh, but then after the fourth I felt sluggish." 

"But really I overrated my opponent, and in preparing so much that it led to an unnatural fatigue. And now we can say with confidence that mistake will not be repeated. But it happened and we are looking at loss and - and where and what we missed."