Anthony Yarde interview: ‘I don’t worry about what people say about me – I am on my own path’

“I don’t need to worry about what other people are talking about me,” Anthony Yarde says of the chorus of armchair pundits who think he should be fighting for the British title, rather than mounting a second defence of his WBO European light-heavyweight belt. “Instead, I focus on the people talking positive and all the positive things that I know I am doing.”

That’s just as well, because Yarde is a peculiarly divisive fighter for one so young and so assuredly talented. Earlier this year, Yarde was ordered by the British Boxing Board of Control to fight Hosea Burton in a final eliminator for Frank Buglioni’s Lord Lonsdale belt, a fight he declined. He instead chose to defend his WBO title against Norbert Nemesapati, stopping the Hungarian in the third round.

His critics contend he ducked Burton because he knew it was a fight he could lose. Yarde disagrees. He claims that he had no interest in fighting Burton, a man who had previously lost to Buglioni in a British title fight last December, and is more interested in rising up the WBO rankings.

Now, Yarde is preparing to fight the Montenegrin-Serbian veteran Nikola Sjekloća, on the undercard of James DeGale’s comeback bout at the Copper Box Arena this weekend. It will be Yarde’s 14th professional fight. He has won 13 by knockout.

“Look, everybody will have an opinion and, when people get an opinion, it can sometimes take a while for them to change their minds,” Yarde explains, when asked why his choice of opponents has repeatedly come in for criticism. “But the opponent I am fighting is a two-time world title challenger. He has never been knocked out before. It is a serious fight and now I need to do my job.”

Yarde’s trainer, Tunde Ajayi, bristles at the suggestion his man is being fed uncompetitive opponents, pointing out that he had just twelve amateur fights before turning professional. To put that into some context, Anthony Joshua — the crown jewel of British boxing, who is also regarded as a late starter in the sport — had 43. Buglioni had 70. Vasyl Lomachenko and Guillermo Rigondeaux, who fight in New York on the same night as Yarde, have 872 between them.

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“Please, tell me another professional in the sport of boxing today with his lack of amateur record,” Ajayi says. “And when people make these comparisons and say that he isn’t fighting anybody, well Nemesapati went six rounds with Callum Smith. He went six rounds with Anthony Dirrell, too. But Anthony beat him in the third, so I don’t see where the criticism is from.

“Sjekloća, the guy that we’re stepping in to face now, has never been stopped and he has previously fought three world champions along with a world-class fighter in Smith. So I don’t get it. And I have to tell myself that the criticism comes from just general boxing fans rather than from students of the game.”

Ajayi hopes that a stylish win over Sjekloća, who boasts an accomplished professional record of 32-4-1, will go a long way to ending the criticism that Yarde is untested at the highest level. (Buglioni recently sneered on iFL.tv that Yarde “hasn’t yet tested himself — he doesn’t want these big fights because he doesn’t have the experience.”) Sjekloća, 39, has not once been stopped in his nomadic 11-year-career, leaving Yarde in no doubt as to what he has to do to impress.

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“He has never been knocked out and so that is what I have on my mind heading into this fight,” Yarde explains. “I really want that knockout. Especially as I feel like — at this moment in my career, preparing for my 14th fight — I am in the entertainment stage of my career. I know that you need to be entertaining at the beginning to get people interested, and what interests people is knockouts and excitement.”

Yarde has delivered plenty of that over the past two years, having turned professional in 2015. Only once has he failed to put away his opponent — in his second fight against the Latvian trial horse Stanislavs Makarenko — with four of his last six bouts ending in the very first round. The Independent's Steve Bunce admiringly remarked “he can go all the way to the very top” after watching Yarde’s demolition of Richard Baranyi to win the WBO European title, while Ajayi confidently predicts he will “be a world champion at 2-3 different weight classes”.

And yet with the hype comes the expectation. Already fans are clamouring to see Yarde — who has boxed just 24 rounds and is only 26-years-old — take on far more experienced opponents. With no fewer than eight homegrown world champions, not to mention a flourishing amateur scene and healthy gate receipts at events up and down the country, these are heady days for British boxing. But Ajayi wonders whether the elevated interest levels could in fact be both a blessing and a curse for Yarde.

“I accept that the hype is inescapable as we are winning and getting close, but it’s not going to be how the fans want it straight away,” he warns. “Already people are talking about Anthony fighting the likes of Sergey Kovalev or whoever, but I’m like: ‘listen, I’m picking the matches and that ain’t happening.’

“I have said this from the very beginning but when Anthony walks into the gym there is no athlete that I have seen — and I am talking football, rugby, and obviously boxing — that trains as hard as him. He is special and he has the right package between the ears, but everything is timing and we have to take one step at a time.”

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Yarde agrees. “I am built on aggression,” he answers in response to one question, while much has been made of his occasionally violent upbringing in Stratford and Forest Gate. But he is erudite and soft-spoken, with a clear vision of his professional future, and he understands his career is a marathon, not a sprint.

“When you look at the facts of what I am doing, it’s actually quite remarkable,” he says. “I don’t want to blow my own trumpet but the aim of the game is to hit and not get hit and that is what I am doing. I haven’t really been hit in the professional game and I am getting rid of my opponents — opponents that other people aren't getting rid of. So at this point, I’ve just got to keep focusing on myself.

“That’s just the approach I have to my life. Sometimes if you spend your time focusing on other people, you give them energy over you; you give them power. I am not those other fighters and so it makes sense for me not to worry about them. I honestly believe that I am not like anybody else out there and every day I am happy to train and push myself, and to study other great fighters. So I am confident.”

Should he beat Sjekloća — as he is expected to — it won’t be long before both Yarde and Ajayi are accosted with questions over who is next in line in his rise up the light-heavyweight ranks. But Yarde is not worried. “I’m on my own path,” he adds. “And I’m not going to be living my career through other people.”