Anthony Yarde is refusing to use his grief at the death of his assistant trainer to fuel his preparations for his fight with David Benavidez on Saturday evening.
The 34-year-old Yarde and Benavidez are to contest the American’s WBC light heavyweight title at the ANB Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where their already-appealing fight tops one of the most appealing promotions of all time.
Confirmation of their matchup, however, came shortly after the death of the popular James Cook MBE. Cook died at 66 after being diagnosed with bladder cancer, ensuring that his last contribution to the highest level of his sport came in the evolution in Yarde that he helped to oversee.
Since the Briton’s defeat by Lyndon Arthur in 2020 he has ultimately improved significantly – as was demonstrated in 2023 when he gave the then-undefeated Artur Beterbiev arguably his toughest fight before being stopped in an entertaining shootout that lasted for eight rounds.
Benavidez, 28, perhaps represents a less intimidating opponent than did Beterbiev, but while Yarde will take some of Cook’s teachings into the ring with him under the guidance of his long-term trainer Babatunde Ajayi, he is determined to ensure a sense of emotion doesn’t undermine him once he is there.
“I spoke to his daughter the other day,” Yarde told BoxingScene. “We had a nice long conversation when I was driving; we was talking for about half an hour. She’s recovering, just like everybody else – everyone recovers at different rates. But she’s in good spirits, and she was saying her dad’s going to be with me and looking down on me. ‘Don’t forget the things he implemented within the camp.’
“I said to her ‘I have to detach it’. That’s not a good thing to do, because you end up fighting strictly off of emotion, and we’ve seen it time and time again – in boxing, one of the first rules you learn is ‘Don’t get angry’. You saw it with Oliver McCall [against Lennox Lewis in 1997] – these kinds of things are because people are going through things, and people don’t know about it, and then they attach their emotion. With that fight in particular, things wasn’t going his way – he started crying in the ring.
“I just don’t believe that you should take any of your outside emotion into a boxing ring and use it as motivation. The thing you should use as motivation is wanting to win, and then trying hard and sticking to the game plan or strategies, and then pulling off the victory and celebrating the name of the people that have left us.”
It is since the fight with Beterbiev that Yarde’s footwork, particularly, has improved. He became frustrated in his pursuit of Joshua Buatsi but he has since beaten Arthur again and knows that a date with Buatsi could also yet follow on account of Buatsi signing with Queensberry Promotions, the organisation with which Yarde has long worked.
“It’s been different,” Yarde admitted. “James brought a great atmosphere to the camp; a lot of early mornings, and a lot more bonding time. On them early mornings the roads are clear; the park’s empty; we’re the first ones in the park or the last ones on the road; it brought a bond to the camp. The trainers are riding their bikes; me and Joel [Kodua, another of Ajayi’s fighters] are running like snow dogs trying to catch them, or they’re riding behind us shouting. It’s something that’s heavily missed. It’s sad as well.
“It’s the runs that have been a bit different, cause that’s where James Cook used to mainly help – getting them runs in. Making sure we’re running like champions; making sure we’re doing things that he done, and other legendary champions had done before us.
“We’ve just tried to continue his legacy. We do it a bit different, because we’re not trying to copy his expertise and do it wrong – and he always changed things as well. We wasn’t working with James for that long, so there wasn’t that much time to get everything in. He was always changing things, because he was so experienced at a high level. We just try to implement little things that he done.”
