Sergey Kovalev says he had to lose 35-plus pounds for Canelo Alvarez fight

Sergey Kovalev posted an Instagram Live video over the weekend complaining about his knockout loss to Canelo Alvarez on November 3.

Excuses? Explanations? You decide.

In an Instagram Live video posted recently, former light heavyweight titleholder Sergey Kovalev sounded off – in Russian – about his knockout loss to Canelo Alvarez on Nov. 2, claiming that the deck was stacked against him from the very start and that he did not have an ideal training camp.

Alvarez, moving up from middleweight, scored a vicious knockout of Kovalev in the 11th round to take Kovalev’s piece of the light heavyweight crown. For his trouble, Kovalev earned a reported $12 million payday, a portion of which went to co-promoters Top Rank and Main Events.

Kovalev’s spiel on a recent episode of the Everlast Talk Box podcast was translated. Here are four takeaways:

  • He entered entered training camp for the Alvarez fight weighing 211 pounds (96 kilograms), when he normally walks around at 190 pounds (86 kilograms).
  • There is no guarantee that he will return to the light heavyweight division, as he suffered from insomnia and loss of appetite as he was trying to make weight.
  • He admitted that he accepted the Alvarez fight for money and asserted that he didn’t have enough time to recover from his fight against Anthony Yarde in August. Kovalev stopped the Briton in the 11th round after nearly getting knocked out himself earlier in the fight.
  • And people who bet on him to win in an attempt to “get rich quick,” as opposed to his true fans, were “losers”