A fight between two of Britain\u2019s leading lights at 175lbs seems set for later this year.<\/p>\n
The Ring had previously reported that Callum Smith \u2013 coming off an exciting win over Joshua Buatsi \u2013 and Anthony Yarde, recent winner over Lyndon Arthur, could meet later in the year.<\/p>\n
Yarde\u2019s trainer, Tunde Ajayi, who has had plenty of spirited exchanges with the Smith family online over the years, told BoxingScene: \u201cThe fight was sealed in February,\u201d said Ajayi.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAll we needed to do was get past Lyndon Arthur, so there\u2019s no more ducking, talking bad about anybody, let\u2019s fight. It\u2019s the only fight that makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smith and Yarde form part of a crop that saw the Liverpool man scalp the previously unbeaten Buatsi, Callum Johnson move up to cruiserweight, Craig Richards lose to Willy Hutchinson, who then lost to Buatsi, and Arthur lose his trilogy fight to Yarde. That leaves, according to Ajayi, Yarde \u2013 27-3 (24 KOs) \u2013 and 35-year-old Smith, 31-2 (22 KOs), as the last men standing in the division in the UK.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCallum\u2019s [WBO] interim champion, we\u2019re now rated high in the WBO and the WBA after the fight last Saturday. It\u2019s a fight I\u2019ve personally wanted to see for a very long time. Two of Britain\u2019s best. We will see who really is the number one in Britain. These are the only two names in the conversation now. Nobody else. I repeat, nobody else is in this conversation but Callum Smith and Anthony Yarde. So let\u2019s do it. Let\u2019s go. August, Riyadh. It\u2019s on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fight between two of Britain\u2019s leading lights at 175lbs seems set for later this year. The Ring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[15227,1935,22403,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-90489","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-callum-smith","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114484512415122471","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90489","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=90489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}