By Elliot Foster
Anthony Yarde extended his unbeaten run with a comprehensive showing in his home city.
The Ilford light-heavyweight, who is ranked number two with the WBO, stopped Dariusz Sek in the seventh round on Saturday night.
Yarde was incredibly dominant against the Polish southpaw from the outset at the O2 Arena, exclusively live on BT Sport and BoxNation.
And with the win, Yarde retained his WBO European and WBO Inter-Continental titles, as part of the supporting cast to Martin Murray’s WBC Silver middleweight title challenge against Texas-based Mexican Roberto Garcia, to move to 16-0 with 15 early finishes.
The MC, Thomas Treiber, announced that the referee, Steve Gray, saved the 31-year-old visitor from any further punishment after two minutes and 17 seconds of the seventh after he was somewhat bludgeoned throughout the contest.
Yarde, 26, will be hoping that a world title fight is just around the corner after a great display in front of a watching former world heavyweight and cruiserweight world champion David Haye, who was impressed with what he saw.
“Everything is timing,” the man who recently turned down a shot at Sergey Kovalev’s WBO belt to build his experience said in the aftermath of dropping and stopping Sek for the first time in the challenger’s campaign in the paid ranks.
“I study boxing and it’s all steady progress. Mike Tyson built his career and I’ve got to do that.
“My promoter and manager will work on that for me, but I’ll fight anybody. He had a decent record and people are turning me down.”
And Frank Warren, Yarde’s promoter, insisted that there was no rush, despite the number of lucrative offers that have already been tabled.
“We keep doing what we are doing with him. He’s learning every fight and he did brilliantly,” he said. “We’ve now got to keep stepping him up and the hope is to get him in a big, big fight by the end of the year. We work to our agenda, to nobody else, and we’re going to do it at our pace and getting to being the best at the very top.”