Of all the recent additions to the professional boxing phrasebook, few are perhaps as jarring as the phrase “Daring to be great”. It is jarring because implicit in this phrase is both an acceptance of defeat and the exoneration of a reckless boxer taking an impossible challenge for a lot of money. It is, in effect, a get-out clause, “daring to be great”. It is designed more for the suits who have arranged the mismatch than the boxer who is, on fight night, being led to the slaughter – or, well, daring to be great.
That said, there are some fighters for whom those two things – daring, and the pursuit of greatness – come naturally. They don’t have to say it or sell it. They just behave in a manner that lets you know the weight of their ambition.
In this category of fighter you can find Anthony Yarde, the British light-heavyweight who fights David Benavidez for the WBC light-heavyweight title this weekend. Yarde, like the many plucky Brits before him, arrives at this world title shot having grown accustomed to the pain of falling short. He has, in fact, twice been here previously, in losing world title efforts against Sergey Kovalev and Artur Beterbiev, so knows how it feels: to try, to lose, to head home disappointed.
And yet, never was there the sense with Yarde that he was “daring” against either Kovalev or Beterbiev, or simply giving it a go. Instead, despite leaving empty-handed, Yarde presented Kovalev and Beterbiev with two of their toughest fights. He was, if only briefly, in with a shot of beating both. He had his moments, in other words. He showed that greatness was, for him, not something to just talk about or imagine.
“The truth is, not everybody wants to be great,” said Yarde’s longtime coach, Tunde Ajayi. “Some people just want to win a Southern Area title or a British title. Some people might be happy winning their world title by receiving an email from a sanctioning body. Some people will be happy fighting a lesser champion and calling themselves a world champion and a modern-day great. But when you are truly great, it’s a different thing. If Anthony had won either of those fights against Kovalev and Beterbiev he would have been great. He’s doing the same thing here [against Benavidez].
“He’s not going away. They talk about third time lucky, but this ain’t third time lucky. You don’t go down the same dangerous road three times and hope for luck at any point. It’s the third time of asking, not third time lucky. There is no luck involved here. This has been carefully planned and managed. He has been dedicated to this journey and has shown time and time again that he will fight anyone.
“It’s a joy to see when we live in an age where it’s all about business. You pick up a belt and most fighters are just thinking about manoeuvring their way towards the biggest purse. They’re not worried about making defences, proving their dominance at the weight, or fighting the best possible opponents. They just want the easiest fights for the most amount of money.
“Ant has only ever wanted to face the best. He has never been solely motivated by money. Money is important, of course, but Ant boxes for more than just money. He wants to leave a legacy and be remembered. He once turned down one million dollars in step-aside money [to fight Kovalev in 2019]. “Where we come from, most families won’t see that kind of money in their entire life. But this kid decided to turn it down and dared to be great. He wanted to fight Kovalev and see how he would do.”
It's a compelling argument, certainly. Even when Ajayi mentions “daring to be great” and you fight the urge to cringe, it becomes a lot easier to win that fight by virtue of how Yarde, 27-3 (24 KOs), has performed in his two world title challenges to date. This, rest assured, is not a light-heavyweight content to make up the numbers and flee with a paycheck. He is instead adamant that his time will come and that becoming a world champion only means something if he dethrones one of the world’s best light-heavyweights.
“With boxing, especially at this level, it’s about motivation,” explained Ajayi. “You need things to stimulate you. We’ve seen what Ant does to the guys below this level. It’s not even a competition. So when these guys are calling him out, I’m like, ‘Do you really think we’ve got time to be worrying about you?’
“You need things to motivate you to get up in the morning and stay that extra hour in the gym. Anthony’s one of those people who needs to be motivated by a challenge, competition. I feel like that’s why he keeps on brushing himself down and coming again. He’s got a dream and he wants to fulfil it. The dream is to become a world champion. For as long as that dream is alive everybody better stand to attention.”
One of the few knocks against Yarde and the way his career has unfolded has to do with its extremities and how he has often gone from routine fights against unknown opponents to world title fights against the best light-heavyweights in the world. This, as an approach, hasn’t always prepared the 34-year-old for the stiffer tests and has sometimes made the jump in class too severe.
For title shot three, however, Yarde has bridged the gap to some extent. His last performance, against Lyndon Arthur in April, bears no comparison to what is required to dethrone Benavidez on Saturday, of course, but at the very least Yarde won a 12-rounder against a decent domestic opponent with whom both Yarde and the rest of us are familiar. (For the sake of comparison, before challenging Sergey Kovalev, Yarde stopped Travis Reeves in five rounds; before challenging Beterbiev, Yarde stopped Stefani Koykov in three.)
“This is the first time we’ve had a [full] camp,” said Ajayi. “For the two previous world title fights it was always a rushed affair. The fight was on, then it was off, then it was on again. That was the pattern with the two Russian fighters [Kovalev and Beterbiev]. They would give us a date and then cancel it and then we’d get another date. Nothing was secure and we never had this time to prepare. There will be no excuses with this one. We’re not looking for them. We don’t need them. Everything has just landed where we want it to land.
“The only time I’ve seen Anthony like this was for the second Lyndon Arthur fight [in December 2020]. It’s that type of energy I’m feeling. Ant is very internal, so he’s not going to give much away to any of us, but you can feel it. There’s going to be a big upset in Riyadh.”
Much of Ajayi’s confidence stems from seeing Yarde in the gym every day and witnessing all the improvements since they first started working together in the amateurs. Ajayi, it’s true, knows Yarde better than anyone, but he also admits that they have, as a team, been learning on the job for the entirety of Yarde’s career. It is only now, in fact, with Yarde 10 years a pro, that the pair have figured out where they went wrong in the past and how to now put it right.
“If you look at his world title performances, he is improving,” said Ajayi. “First of all, they said he gasses out. But, whether that’s true or not, that isn’t the case anymore. Now he’s working with Ruben Tabares [a strength and conditioning coach]. You go look at the stats for his last fight [against Arthur in April] and you will see that he threw more punches in the 11th round than he did in the first round. In terms of light-heavyweights overall, Anthony Yarde’s punch stats in that last fight – after working with Ruben for just four weeks – were higher than anyone’s. They’ve had a full camp together now. This is going to be a fight. I’m so looking forward to it.”
As for the challenge ahead, Ajayi, for all his excitement, is under no illusions. He accepts that David Benavidez is a champion no easier than Kovalev or Beterbiev and that the fighter who one day dethrones the American will have to do more than just roll a dice and dare.
“A very, very good fighter,” Yarde’s coach said of the WBC champion. “He’s got a good team around him and he can really fight. But as a light-heavyweight we know he has only had two fights: one against [Oleksandr] Gvozdyk and one against David Morrell, who was an 11-fight novice. He touched the floor in that [Morrell] fight as well.
“Much like Errol Spence, if you give people time in a particular weight class, they are only going to get better and better. So we’re preparing for an even better Benavidez than the one we saw in the Gvozdyk fight and the Morrell fight. I wouldn’t say he’s technical at all. Yeah, he can throw a lot of punches, but so could Amir Khan. That didn’t stop Khan getting knocked out by a well-timed Danny Garcia left hook.
“Speed can be nullified and Ant has not been losing world title fights because of a lack of skill. In fact, I would go so far as to say he was more skilled than Kovalev and Beterbiev. It’s just that they had the thing you can’t buy, borrow or pretend to have: experience. Now we’re walking into the fight with the experience. Now is the time for Ant to show everyone his skill factor – if it’s that kind of fight. We already know he can fight; he has shown that. He has also said he expects this fight to be a ‘shootout’, so I’m not going to second guess him on that, even if that’s not what we’re preparing for. We’re preparing for that and everything else. We’ve got all bases covered.”
Forget daring to be great. It sounds as though Anthony Yarde is preparing to be great – and has been for years.
