By Steve Kim

There is a perception that going into their June 17th rematch that Andre Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) has the capability to make the necessary to adjustments needed to swing the fight clearly in his favor but not Sergey Kovalev (30-1, 26 KOs).

"I laugh at it, I tell you why, you look at the first fight, Ward came on the second half but he wasn't dominating,"opined John David Jackson, a couple of days ago during a media day in Oxnard for Kovalev."He did just enough to survive and maybe win a few rounds with a few adjustments. He has to make bigger adjustments because in the first half of the second fight can he really make Sergey respect him the way he needs to?

"(Ward) has to make more adjustments than Sergey does. Sergey has small adjustments, he needs to make and like I said, in the second half of the fight make sure he's in good shape to survive that second half of the fight."

Back in November during their initial encounter, Kovalev controlled the early rounds (even scoring a second round knockdown) and built an early lead on the scorecards before Ward rallied in the second half of the fight to win by the score of 114-113 on all three cards. Many observers believe Kovalev had done enough to retain his light heavyweight titles.

For the rematch, Jackson says - ''Ward has to make the bigger adjustments, he has to be more aggressive, use less movement if he really wants to win this fight the second time around."

So what does the veteran trainer expect when they clash again at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks?

"For the fans, I'm hoping for a great fight,"he says."The first fight was nice, could have been more action-packed. If both of these fighters have real disdain the way they say they do, make it a good fight for the fans and we'll talk about it for years to come. So I'm hoping for a better fight than the first. The first fight wasn't bad.

"If things go right and they should - and Sergey does what he's supposed to - he wins."

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.