By Thomas Gerbasi
The call from boxing manager Egis Klimas to boxing trainer John David Jackson wasn’t a long one.
“John, I’m sending you a fighter.”
Klimas’ fighter, Sergey Kovalev, had just split with his previous trainer, Abel Sanchez, after a seventh round stoppage of Roman Simakov in December of 2011 that lifted his pro record to 17-0-1. The Russian was a star on the rise with one punch knockout power, but he was still raw. In other words, it was the perfect project for Jackson, a former two division world champion who knew what it took to get to those heights.
So he was intrigued. Apparently Kovalev was too, as he drove all the way from California to Jackson’s gym in Florida.
Then they met.
“You’ve got to remember there was a big language barrier,” Jackson recalled. “I didn’t speak any Russian and he spoke very little English. “So I tried to show him a move that I thought would make what he was trying to do better.”
“No. I’m not doing that,” Kovalev replied to Jackson’s request.
“I walked away from him,” Jackson said. “I started cursing and I told my assistant, ‘You deal with this so and so; I don’t want to talk to him.’”
But Kovalev showed up the next day, and the day after that, and so on and so on. And Jackson worked with his new charge, eventually finding out what made him tick.
“As time went on, I began to understand him and I thought, okay, instead of me trying to just teach him, I’m going to start doing it on the sly. When I do mittwork, I’m gonna throw in what I want him to do, and I’m going to teach him without making him really have to do it.”
And it worked. Not that Kovalev would let his stony facade crack in front of his coach. But Jackson was getting through.
“He (Kovalev) would take it back to the room. And his masseuse said, ‘John, everything you tell him in the gym, he fights you on it. But when he goes back to the room at night, everything you showed him, he does it and he keeps on doing it.’ But in the gym, he won’t give you that satisfaction. He’s a real stubborn guy. And that’s okay. As long as he does it, that’s what I want. I don’t say, do this or try this. He wants to be his own guy. And he listens to me, but he listens in his own way. So I accepted that’s who he is. The first day was rough, but we got past that and once we had that understanding, the more and more it works for us.”
Since their first fight together – Kovalev’s second-round stoppage of Darnell Boone in their 2012 rematch – the duo has produced 13 wins without a loss, 11 knockouts and three world light heavyweight titles. So it’s worked, and Jackson expects that run to continue when Kovalev faces Andre Ward on November 19.
“Ward is very good at what he does,” Jackson said of the former super middleweight king. “He’s not the best, he’s not the greatest, he’s not the fastest, he’s not the strongest – but he’s good at what he does. So we have to neutralize his strengths and expose the weaknesses and capitalize on them. He’s not Superman. Don’t get me wrong, he’s good, I really studied him and I respect what he does as a fighter, but he’s very beatable.
“No one’s come with the solution to solve the riddle that is Andre Ward,” he continues. “But I think with this kid Sergey Kovalev, I have the solution and on the 19th I want to prove my theory right.”
The Kovalev-Ward bout is clearly the most highly anticipated of the year, and with good reason. Two unbeaten fighters, both in the upper reaches of the pound-for-pound list, two diverse styles, and so much on the line. Yet what also intrigues is the clash of the men who will be in the corner that night in Las Vegas – Jackson and Ward’s longtime coach Virgil Hunter.
Jackson doesn’t downplay this matchup, admitting that it’s equally exciting to match wits with Hunter.
“Once you get two pretty well-known trainers opposing one another, egos take over,” he said. “You want to be the best and, in my heart, I feel that I am truly one of the best teachers of boxing. Not just a trainer, but a teacher of boxing. And Virgil has a very good student in Ward, the best fighter he’s ever had, so I’m trying to match both the fighter and the trainer. Not only do I watch tapes of Ward, but I watch tapes of Virgil and what he does with his guys. I see a lot of mistakes, but he has one greater student that has done very well for himself, and that’s catapulted him up into the upper echelon of trainers. I worked hard, I developed five world champions, three that were underdogs, and I’ve done well, so I think with all trainers, it’s an ego thing and you want to prove that you are the best. You may not get the recognition, but you want to prove that you are the best. So for this fight here, it kinda falls into that category a little bit.”
Just as he did over the course of his 15-year fighting career, the 53-year-old Jackson has paid his dues, and while he has gotten positive notices for his work in the corner and the gym, a Trainer of the Year award has eluded him thus far. That might change with a Kovalev win over Ward, and that would be just fine with Jackson.
“It would be a hell of an achievement for him to win that fight because you’re beating one of today’s best pound-for-pound fighters, a kid who has been undefeated since he was 12 years old, who cleaned out the 168-pound division, so Andre’s no slouch,” Jackson said.
“Listen, I tell people I’ve been in the running for Trainer of the Year like three years in a row, and I may never get it. So this might be the year to get it and I would relish the moment, but if I don’t, I just want people to know that John David Jackson Jr. was a true teacher of boxing – not just a trainer, not just a coach, but a true teacher for those fighters that listen to me.”
Even the ones like Kovalev, who may not show that he’s listening until he needs to.
“Here’s the thing that cracks me up,” Jackson said. “All the headaches we go through in the gym, come fight night, anything that I asked him to do and showed him to do, he does. So when it’s all said and done, I don’t mind all the headaches or all the stuff I’ve gone through because he does exactly what I ask him to do come fight night.”
