By Ryan Burton

In this two part Q&A, world class trainer Kevin Cunningham opens up on the personal demons that his fighter, three-time champion Devon Alexander (26-4), went through and how he is close to returning to the ring after kicking a two and a half year prescription drug addiction that began after his dominant victory over former champion Marcos Maidana.

Kevin Cunningham: Everything is going great man. As you know, I relocated and moved from St. Louis to South Florida in West Palm Beach. We found a nice little building and built a gym, built a training camp here at Cunningham's Gym. I wanted to relocate out of the Midwest and in the back of my mind I always wanted to make the move to work with some of boxing's elite fighters and just being in St. Louis and the Midwest you got the 12-15 inches of snow in the winter and the 108 degrees with humidity in the summer and you got the crazy high crime so it wasn't the ideal place for fighters to come and have training camps. Florida has beautiful weather. It is a great atmosphere, beautiful beaches, great restaurants. It is a paradise and great place to have training camps.

Where a world class fighter can have great training and focus on getting ready for a big fight. That is what I put together here in West Palm Beach. A pretty nice little facility for fighters who want to come here and focus and not deal with a lot of traffic and other things going on. It is just a perfect set up for training camps and here we are.

BoxingScene.com: The last couple of fights for Devon obviously didn't go the way you guys wanted.  What can you say about this camp?

Kevin Cunningham: He has been in camp and training since February. He has been here since February so he has been in camp for a while but it has been a good thing.  He is taking the time to get everything all back together. As you know he hasn't been himself in the ring the last four fights - every fight after the Maidana fight. To be frank, we make it crystal clear about what the issue was. Prior to the Maidana fight he had a injury in training. One of his sparring partners headbutted him in the nose and his nose was a little swollen after that and he didn't make a big deal out of it and we went through with the Maidana fight and as you know he beat Maidana better than anybody who has fought Maidana. He beat Maidana relatively easy.

After the fight his nose was just continuing to swell so I told him, 'man you need to go see a doctor.' I thought maybe the nose was broken but the doctor said, 'nah he has blood clots,' so they had to get that out and he had a little surgery.  So he went in and had the surgery done and it was the first surgery of his life so he had the surgery and they removed the blood clots and some cartilage out of his nose and after you have surgery the doctors prescribe pain killers. Well like I said that was his first time having surgery and it was his first time getting prescription drugs. Obviously the pain killers felt good to him and he kept going back to the doctor to get these prescriptions for these pain killers.

It went on for two and a half years and he kept it hidden from me. I didn't know nothing about it. I just knew something wasn't right. I thought it was something that was a physical health problem so I had him go out to the Mayo Clinic to get himself checked out. No matter how hard we trained the cardio wasn't there, the reflexes. He just wasn't looking like himself and everyone saw it in his fights.  That is what we were dealing with.  Everybody who he fought after Maidana, from Randall Bailey to Shawn Porter, Amir Khan, he fought under the influence of pain killers. So he wasn't really being himself on fight night. It's not making excuses. It is just dealing with the reality of it all being addicted. He let himself get addicted to the pain killers and that is what he have been dealing with.

A couple of months after the Martinez fight he called me to his house. He was there with his wife and he broke down and told me what he had been hiding from me the past two and a half years.  He went through the whole rehab process and all those steps and the doctors said he went through them with flying colors and he has been free and clean of any type of pain killers for almost a year now and he has been sparring with some decent guys and looking sharp. He is starting to look like his old self again. He is hungry and wants to get a chance to redeem himself and get back in the mix in the welterweight division. So he has been here since February. He has been training and been grinding through the process.  He is looking great. We got the whole program going - strength training and all the technique and skill aspect. The boxing is more important than anything, to have your skill and technique back down pat. His reflexes are back. I think he is going to come back a lot stronger. He still has that speed and everything through it all. He just turned 30 so he is still relatively young but he has a ton of experience.

BoxingScene.com: Do you think that the Martinez fight was rock bottom and that is when he decided that he had to do something about his problem?

Kevin Cunningham: Yeah - but the Martinez fight - I wanted to call that fight off but he begged and begged me. It had got so bad that I was like, 'dude I don't know what the hell it is but there is something you ain't telling me because you don't look right.' As far as his eyes, his body, nothing looked right. He didn't look right in camp and I wanted to call it off and pull out of the fight but he begged me not to and I went through with it and that was the turning point.  I told him that, 'I don't want to see you in the ring again. Until you tell me what is going on I don't want to see you in there.' I didn't know if it was some physical ailment and Al had us go to the Mayo Clinic in Vegas and he had a thorough physical and those guys couldn't find anything wrong with him. You can't find something like that if you are not looking for that exact thing. It is hard to detect.

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