By Steve Kim

At the media workout for Sergey Kovalev - who faces Andre Ward again on June 17th at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas - at the Boxing Laboratory gym in Oxnard, California, was his trainer John David Jackson. Who made it clear that despite whatever claims made by Ward's representatives he was not going to switch sides for the rematch.

"As you could see I'm still here, the ship was not jumped. I'm not going to get into a lot but let the fans know I did NOT initiate the initial meeting of the minds to see if I could even go with Ward's team."

BoxingScene reported on this issues on Monday night.

Jackson stated - "I've been with Sergey going on six years now and I've been with him before he won the title and it's the right thing to do. He and I started this together and title together and we'll get this victory together and we'll move on."

Back in November during the first match-up, Jackson was noticeably muted in the corner as Kovalev dropped a disputed decision to Ward.

"For the second go-around I'll have a lot more control. Certain things happened that fight that were not within my power," stated the veteran trainer. "But once the fight ended you could see these things didn't work and Sergey realized that and we went back to the way things used to be. I'm going to run this ship and we're going to see what happens."

Kovalev has split this camp between Big Bear and Oxnard. On this particular day there didn't seem to be any visible tension between the fighter and trainer. Kovalev's camp believes this is much ado about nothing.

"I think they're trying to pull everything they can in their book, their camp they're trying to get some negative things into Sergey's head," said his manager, Egis Klimas.

"And look, John David Jackson is here, as you can see he is giving interviews and he's training with Sergey and I think it's hard to break this team."

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.