EVERYTHING’S been going great. With an experienced veteran what you do is remind them of certain things and the rest will take care of itself. He’s been doing it for so long, Canelo’s not going to present him with anything he hasn’t seen before. The key is just staying focused and concentrating on what we have to do.

Anybody can be dangerous at any time. If we focus on what we have to do, I believe in my heart everything else is going to take care of itself.

Canelo has a hell of a trainer, Mr. [Eddy] Reynoso. I’m sure there’s things they’re going to work on to try to get inside so I’m not look at this as being the bigger guy or the stronger guy. My goal that night is for Sergey to be the better guy. I don’t care about us bigger or stronger. That night we’ve got to be the better guy.

It wasn’t demanding physically [boxing again straight after the Anthony Yarde fight] because we couldn’t come into camp hard, because it was five weeks until this fight. We gradually got back in the groove, he’d just fought, he was only off for two or three weeks. We’re cruising right now.

The last fight was only hard when he lost focus. When you’ve got a young man like Yarde, that’s given a shot at the world title, he was very, very confident in himself that he was going to win. He came to fight. It was inexperience that he showed.

I was saying that [that he’d pull Kovalev out of the fight] to wake him up. Because he fell asleep. He got lazy. He got hit with stuff he shouldn’t have got hit with. I had to remind him, look if this is what you’re going to do then I’m going to stop it now and he said to me don’t stop it, I got him now he’s tired.

Maxim Dadashev [who tragically passed away] is on my mind every day but I use it in a positive way, I don’t use it in a way that it’s going to affect my job. I ask myself what would Max want me to do. How would Max want me to handle this?

Canelo Alvarez
Hogan Photos/Golden Boy Promotions

I respect Canelo for taking this challenge. Not too many guys would have done it. Without a catchweight. He didn’t ask for a catchweight, that makes it even more intriguing.

When he moved up to fight Rocky Fielding and you’ve seen how easy that fight was, who else is there for him to fight? Okay, him and ‘GGG’ did it twice but who else was there that’s going to get the fans interested in it? There’s nobody but Kovalev.

Kovalev’s jab is going to be the most important thing. I don’t focus on power because Canelo’s a very smart fighter. He sets traps well, he does a lot of good things in there. So I’m not worried about the power, if anybody hits you right, I don’t care how much the weight difference is, catch someone on the right button, you’re going to sleep. The key is just not to get caught with anything big. The key is just to go in there and do what you have to do.

It’s a fight where you should get a couple of beers, sit down and watch.

Sergey Kovalev and Canelo Alvarez fight for the WBO light-heavyweight title on November 2 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.