‘This one feels right’ – Anthony Yarde ready for Beterbiev

In December 2020, the once-promising career of Anthony Yarde appeared to be in tatters. While his first professional defeat, to long-reigning world champion Sergey Kovalev in the Russian’s backyard, could be mitigated by the marked disparity in experience, hostile environment and nearly stopping his rival, the second setback was, on the surface, far harder to justify.

Yarde had produced a meandering, desultory performance en route to a split points defeat against domestic rival Lyndon Arthur, only seeming to come alive in the final round when his latent aggression, finally effective, proved too little too late.

Calls to ditch mentor Tunde Ajayi, present since the head trainer had encouraged Yarde to “empty the tank” versus Kovalev, grew in both number and volume. The fighter himself invited further scorn by insisting for some time after the Arthur defeat that he had done enough to triumph on the scorecards. The fairy tale, albeit familiar story of boxing pulling a troubled kid away from the wrong side of the tracks had lost its gloss, as Yarde scrabbled for answers. Deep down, however, the east Londoner knew it was about far more than occurred in the ring.

“I lost five people in total,” Yarde reveals as we sit in his Ilford gym. It was already known that the fighter’s father and grandmother has passed away due to Covid 19 during the pandemic, but Anthony also lost an aunt and two further grandparents leading up to the Arthur showdown. “I didn’t get a chance to mourn. I was putting on this brave face, being the strength for my family but I didn’t realise at the time, I ended up being a bit depressed.
“I was going straight home from the gym, not seeing my friends, urinating in plastic bottles in my room; I’d do anything to not leave my room! I made weight for that fight so easy, because I wasn’t eating properly.
“I was overcompensating by coming to the gym, laughing – everything’s funny - and avoiding serious conversations. I wasn’t that close to my dad but I realised that’s part of you… that’s gone. It was all too much, the last two deaths happened two weeks before the Lyndon Arthur fight. But I don’t wana tell anyone because the last time I told people we had deaths in the family that’s all everyone was talking about; every interview I do.
“That fight felt like a daze, I was going back to the wrong corner, I couldn’t remember any of that fight afterwards. I was like, ‘I won that fight, that was an easy fight.’ When I watched the fight I was like, ‘Geez, this is not the fight I was watching.’
“One thing I learned from that situation is that your mind needs to be right to go into a professional boxing ring. Coz no one cares about ‘Look what he went through’ or ‘Should he be in the ring?’ People only care about the result. That’s why, since then, no games.”

Yarde ultimately reciprocated the loyalty of Tunde, who had broken ties with other promising talents to focus solely on his star pupil. The pair added a valuable third pair of eyes in former European champion James Cook MBE and haven’t looked back. Arthur was blitzed and dismissed in just four rounds of a 2021 rematch, enabling Yarde to regain his mandatory contender position with the WBO. Two tick-over wins sandwiched that cathartic victory and Yarde, now with a healthy mindset and in his physical prime, believes the result against unified world champion Artur Beterbiev on Saturday night at Wembley Arena will be rather different to his previous title bid. To parrot one of Ajayi’s favourite mottos, ‘Everything is timing.’

“It’s destiny,” Yarde declares regarding the BT Sport main event, and it sounds sincere. “I’m just zen, I’m so calm. No one’s got the heart that I’ve got, the balls that I’ve got. ‘You don’t wana fight that guy, that guy’s a monster, he’s got 18 fights, 18 knockouts, he’s been Olympics, he’s got all the experience in the world, he’s Russian, he’s made of iron…’ Bring him! I wana fight that guy. That’s how I wana do it. This one feels right.”

*The full video interview with Yarde is below.