Anthony Yarde: I’ve Been Going For A Decade But I’m Not Done Yet

Anthony Yarde takes one look around the room and then heads for the door.
“Do you mind if we do this outside?” he asks. “I’d rather be standing in the sunshine than in here.”
Once outside, he props himself up against a lamppost just off the High Road in his home town of Ilford and reflects on a career that turns 10 years old next month.
“Do I still love it?” He says with a smile. “What do you think?”
The 33-year-old has just finished a two hour session at the gym behind us under the watchful eye of his long-time trainer Tunde Ajayi. At various points he has broken away from the graft to play slaps with other boxers in the gym, with Ajayi also dragged into the mayhem, while his cool down was an even split between core work and dancing.

“It has been like that for basically every day of my career,” he says. “You’ve got to enjoy what you do otherwise what’s the point? It’s 10 years in May, it’s crazy, it goes so quick. Imagine you spent the last 10 years doing it if you didn’t love it? This game ain’t easy.
“I started boxing late compared to a lot of others but I remember telling people I’m going to be world champion. When I was starting out it seemed like I was crazy. But I just had it in my mind that it would happen and I’m going to work towards it.
“As I’ve got more experience, I’ve realised that I actually love this. In the gym we’ve got that gorilla, go get it attitude, that lions in the camp mentality. It’s still that, it hasn’t faded at all.”
It has been a rollercoaster ride of a career for Yarde, whose resume has switched between straightforward victories over men well below his level and world title fights against some of the best light-heavyweights of the generation.
Ahead of his outing at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, as part of the undercard for The Ring’s Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves event, Yarde is currently 26-3 (24) after nearly a decade in the pros. Two of those defeats came via stoppage against formidable Russians Sergey Kovalev and Artur Beterbiev four years apart. Sandwiched between them, however, was a 12-round split decision defeat to Lyndon Arthur in December 2020 which he avenged 12 months later.
On Saturday night, he gets the chance to make it 2-1 against the Manchester man in their trilogy bout, nearly five years after their initial encounter.
So convincing was his victory in the 2021 rematch at the Copper Box Arena, which came to a violent conclusion midway through the fourth round, that Arthur has suggested that Yarde will be expecting an easy night in north London this weekend. But Yarde is adamant there will be no hint of complacency.
“Let him think that,” Yarde says of Arthur’s suggestion. “If he thinks I’m going to be coming in lagging, then cool. I’m better than I was in the rematch and I’ll be trying to come as Mr Excitement. Explosive.”
Yarde will be the first to admit that element was missing in his last outing, when he laboured to a 10-round points win over little-known Ralfs Vilcans despite dropping the Latvian visitor with the very first right hand he threw.
Perhaps, that night he looked like a man who simply does not love it anymore but now rejuvenated and on the other side of a well-publicised legal battle with his promoter Frank Warren, the old Yarde is back.
“I remember first starting out and I was looking at the professionals who had been going for eight or nine years and now I’m in that position,” he adds.
“I’m one of the older heads. I was sparring Kyle Davies from Manchester and I was thinking, he’s one of the up-and-comers now and maybe he’s trying to prove a point. That used to be me.
“I remember sparring James DeGale when I was an amateur and he was pro and I had that same mindset. I wanted to see how I’d compete against someone at that level. I went there with Umar Sadiq and we did four rounds each with him. I bloodied his nose.
“He was like ‘nah nah nah, fuck that. Next round, we’re not going to have a clock’. I agreed and I remember we were going at it for ages then my coach at the time Tony Cesay saying ‘that’s enough son’.
“Good times, man. He said ‘you’re going to be a problem when you turn pro’. Now I’m the older pro who is saying that to the young ones. It’s mad how it switches.”
DeGale went on to make history as the first British Olympic gold medalist to win a world title as a professional and retired as a two-time world super-middleweight champion. Yarde is still yet to tick that box but knows that an impressive victory over Arthur will help set him on a path toward the third title shot of his career.
“You know what they say, how do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans,” he says. “I don’t have a plan or a map. I have a goal and a vision and the only thing I can control is how hard I work. I know I will not box past the age of 40 but I have time on my side, I can go until I’m 37-38.
“This is all part of the journey and sometimes when you’re reading a book, the more things that happen in the middle, the more interesting it is. That’s how I see it. When I’m retired, and I’m old and I’ve got grandchildren, you sit back and you say ‘what did I do with my life?’ How interesting was it really?
“There are some people who just live their life complacent who don’t ever want to be uncomfortable at all but it’s fucking boring doing the same thing over and over again. Something bad happens, they fumble up and they’re finished.
“But for me, it’s part of the journey, man. Remember, as humans, we’re just passing on information. One day it will all be over and someone might say ‘you remember that guy Anthony Yarde?’. I’m just trying to do everything I can while I’m still here.
“And that’s why you gotta enjoy the sunshine every time it comes out.”