By Keith Idec
John David Jackson hasn’t been shy about voicing his opinion of Jean Pascal.
Sergey Kovalev’s trainer feels the former WBC light heavyweight champion is past his prime, hardly the same fighter he once was. The 33-year-old Pascal vehemently disagrees as his rematch against Kovalev nears.
“I think John David Jackson should mind his own business,” Pascal said Tuesday during a conference call to promote their Jan. 30 fight at Bell Centre in Montreal (HBO). “He’s not in my body. He’s not in my mind. He doesn’t know sh*t about me. He doesn’t know sh*t about my mental condition. So if they think I’m not the same fighter, good for them, good for him. But I know that I’m still a warrior, I’m still in my prime.
“That’s why I have no hesitation to fight Kovalev again, because I know the first fight was stopped too early. I was on my way back. Yes, of course, Sergey was [controlling] the fight and was winning the fight at that point. But I was on my way back. I was coming back. I won the fifth, the sixth rounds. So like I said, Sergey says that this time around he’s gonna finish the job earlier. I tried to put a bet on that.”
Russia’s Kovalev (28-0-1, 25 KOs) stopped Quebec’s Pascal in the eighth round of their first fight March 14 at Bell Centre. Pascal (30-3-1, 17 KOs, 1 NC) won his lone bout since Kovalev defeated him, but he struggled at times on his way to defeating Cuba’s Yunieski Gonzalez (16-2, 12 KOs) by unanimous decision in their 10-rounder July 25 in Las Vegas.
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
