Although he is adamant that he is not looking too far into the future, Anthony Yarde would be forgiven for impatiently wanting to consign Lyndon Arthur, his next opponent, to the past.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rivals now for five years, the meeting between Yarde and Arthur tonight at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will be their third, with the score currently tied at 1-1. The last time they boxed, in 2021, Yarde stopped Arthur inside four rounds, which gave the impression that the rivalry was done and suggested there was no need for a third fight. But things didn\u2019t pan out that way, nor did Yarde progress the way he would have liked off the back of that stoppage win. Instead, despite bravely challenging Artur Beterbiev for the world light-heavyweight title in 2023, Yarde struggled to build on his momentum and secure the big fights he wanted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, three years after exacting revenge on Arthur, he fights him for a third time. He knows that it is not a fight anybody was demanding, but accepts it is one he probably needs. He also knows that at the age of 33 there is no time to waste and that beating Arthur for a second time must trigger a wave of activity and some meaningful fights.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As such, Yarde, 26-3 (24), already has a few names in mind; some old names, familiar names. Two of them, Callum Smith and Joshua Buatsi, combined to produce one of the best fights of the year in February, and Yarde, an interested observer, just so happened to be in attendance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe outcome didn\u2019t surprise me,\u201d he told BoxingScene. \u201cI did think it was going to be a toe-to-toe fight and it ended up going exactly as I thought it would go. People forget that Smith is a former world super-middleweight champion. He\u2019s not a build-up fight. He\u2019s a top contender. The only two people he has lost against are Canelo [Alvarez] and Beterbiev. I feel like it was a senseless fight for Buatsi at that stage in his career. I felt like there was no real reward in it. They were fighting for Buatsi\u2019s belts, so what was in it for him [Buatsi]?\u201d<\/p>\n
In the end, Buatsi lost his unbeaten record that night in Riyadh, with Smith a well-deserved winner after 12 gruelling, nip-and-tuck rounds. As for Yarde, who has previously tried to fight both, he is not averse to sharing a ring with either man \u2013 the winner or loser \u2013 later this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope so,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re two major fights in the UK for me. I\u2019ve shown my personality. Even though people still question me, which I don\u2019t understand, I\u2019ve shown my character. I\u2019ll fight literally anybody. I feel like both of them are fights that make sense for me in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Anthony Yarde, the future starts on Sunday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although he is adamant that he is not looking too far into the future, Anthony Yarde would be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[15227,1935,22319,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-50728","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-anthony-yarde","9":"tag-boxing","10":"tag-lyndon-arthur","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114401394357775712","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}