By Edward Chaykovsky

Last Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, veteran trainer Abel Sanchez sat ringside and watched Andre Ward win a twelve round unanimous decision over Sergey Kovalev to capture the IBF, WBO, WBA light heavyweight world titles.

All three of the official judges had it scored 114-113 in Ward's favor. Ward was able to recover from a bad start, which saw him go down in the second round.

Sanchez was ringside with his star fighter, WBC, WBA, IBF, IBO middleweight world champion Gennady 'GGG' Golovkin.

In the week leading up to the fight, Sanchez had predicted a very dominating performance by Kovalev and expected the Russian puncher to win by knockout.

He was pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be a close, competitive fight.

While Sanchez had scored the fight for Kovalev, 114-113, he doesn't have a problem with Ward getting the verdict because the fight as very close.

"I thought [the scorecards] should have been the other way [for Kovalev], but one round could have made a difference. One round either way could and did make a difference [in the final scoring]. It was a great fight, fans enjoyed a great fight. Andre recovered from a shaky start and won the fight," Sanchez told ES News.

Sanchez was impressed with the corner work by Ward's trainer, Virgil Hunter, who kept his fighter calm and on point after watching him go down hard in the second round.

"The corner did their job and had him under control after he got knocked down. I didn't see it on TV, but I thought Virgil did a great job of keeping [Ward] to stick to the game plan," Sanchez said.