by David P. Greisman

Blake Caparello knows what Sergey Kovalev has done to his past opponents. That doesn't mean Caparello is afraid of Kovalev's power or thinks the same consequence will come of him.

“I’m just confident in my ability,” Caparello told reporters a week before his Aug. 2 fight against Kovalev. “To be the best you have to beat the best. Sergey’s the best at the moment. People are just throwing out his name, but I don’t see the phone ringing. We actually jumped at the opportunity, and we’re very confident.

“You got to respect him,” he said. “You got to respect every fighter you get in there with. A lot of people make the mistake of they fear. If you fear the power, you’ve lost the fight already. You’ve got to respect it, but you can’t fear it.”

Caparello says that Kovalev has some good tools and isn’t just a fighter with “big, devastating power.” That’s not to say there aren’t weaknesses he feels he can exploit in Kovalev.

He wouldn’t say specifically what they are, but he was a little bit more open about what other opponents have not done.

“They haven’t negated his power. They’ve sat in his power. They’ve given him the power,” Caparello said.

That’s not his style, he said.

“I like to be slick. I like the smarts of boxing,” Caparello said. “And mentally, I’m tough. Even if he hits hard and you get hurt, physically you might get hurt but if you’re mentally tough, you can get through it. It goes a long way.”

He was then asked who has hit him the hardest.

“My mum,” he said.

Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide . Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com