By Ryan Burton

Mandalay Bay, LAS VEGAS - All of the animosity in the lead up to the Andre Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) vs. Sergey Kovalev (30-1, 26 KOs) rematch will culminate Saturday night when the #1 and #2 light heavyweights in the world renew acquaintances in a HBO pay-per-view event.

Ward took Kovalev's WBA/WBO/IBF titles with a narrow 114-113 victory on all three cards in heir first encounter in November.

Since that fight, Kovalev has relentlessly tormented Ward, making fun of his 'Son of God' nickname, calling him 'Son Of Judges' as he believes he was robbed in their first meeting and has hurled several other insults on social media.

Ward's team recently told BoxingScene.com that Kovalev's trainer John David Jackson reached out to them and tried to switch sides and help Ward. Jackson vehemently denied the claim and said that it was actually Ward's team that reached out to him.

Kovalev said that he is tired of what he feels are "lies" being told by Team Ward and said that there are a lot of other people who feel the same way that he does and have told him that they want him to shut Ward up once and for all.

"In my eyes I see that nobody wants to work with them. I don't want to say who said it but a lot of people have been around me or meet me and they say, 'finish him. Finish him," said Kovalev.

The 34-year-old is very confident going into the second fight. He has said on several occasions that he overtrained for the first fight and has also stated that Ward doesn't have much punching power either.

"I wasn't happy. Why did I do a lot of work for this guy? He is nothing. He did nothing to me. He had nothing," Kovalev stated.

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