Comments Thread For: Callum Johnson Gives Yarde a Good Shot of Stunning Kovalev

[BIGPOPPAPUMP]

While the fight has yet to be officially announced, undefeated puncher Anthony Yarde is expected to get his mandatory crack at WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev in the coming months. Another dangerous puncher at 175, Callum Johnson, believes Kovalev has already seen his best days. He feels his countryman has a very good shot of walking away with world title.
[Click Here To Read More]

[BUCSBronzemedal]

Anthony Yarde has been managed and promoted to a no.1 spot without taking any real risks at world level. He had 10 warm-up fights against journeymen (47-138 combined record) to begin his career, absolutely blasted them out with KO's in all but one of them.
Then at 10-0 he challenges for the Southern Area title, against the champ a 6-1-1 fighter. Legit big KO win with big body shots,multiple kd's.
At 11-0 he skips the domestic title route (English title then British title) and takes on the WBO European champion Richard Baranyi 18-1 and destroys him with a big KO in around.
So at 12-0 his career is looking good just took 2 risky fights beats them easy and has a world ranking.
His next 7 fights are very well matched with smaller men or older fighter's being used though Yarde destroys all of them to his credit picking up the vacant WBO Inter-continental belt along the way to get a no.1 ranking despite not fighting a world ranked contender top 5 or 10 in the world (with the exception of his 12th fight when he fought Baranyi who was WBO ranked 8th at the time).
I think Yarde has been managed well, and when he has the natural ability that he has then taking on a 36 year old Kovalev is a risk worth taking.
Yarde's criticisms only come from not fighting for the British title (bypassing 3 or 4 fighters) or not going down the typical E.B.U route for a European title (2 or 3 fighters). These routes have ranking systems and title eliminator's ordered. Yarde's team withdrew from an ordered purse bid for a British title eliminator.
However in his 14th fight whilst defending WBO version of European title he did fight an opponent who in his previous bout had a DRAW in a EBU title fight, Nikola Sjekloca though he was 39 years old.
His last 4 fights have been against under-sized opponents mixed in with one tall southpaw (91-19 combined record) for learning purposes and he's KO'd them all easily. The average age of his last 5 opponent's have been over 34 years old.
Is he ready for Kovalev with this type of preparation? Maybe he has the natural ability
I hope he's been getting some top sparring but I like his style and I like how he's been managed the WBO route, a final eliminator probably would've sharpened his skills at world level but take the fight and I believe that a 36 year old Kov is on borrowed time so why not be the man to take him out?