By Tré Berry III | 08/25/2019

🇬🇧 Anthony Yarde 🇬🇧

Young, interesting prospect-turned contender 🇬🇧Anthony “Beast From the East” Yarde (18-1-0, 17KO👊) over the course of a couple years has peaked intrigue and interest from fans in the United Kingdom. Much of their interest in Yarde is in witnessing his 💥explosive power, while aesthetically matching the tangible results that manifest during his bouts with his overall physique.

He also has a natural personality that is easy to connect to the fans, which is another dimension of his increased camera time. To hark on the first point however, the very thing that fans are enamored with Yarde over is ultimately what was his undoing in his Title fight against 🇷🇺Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev that took place yesterday on August 24th, and that was him being funneled in too tight with only one aspect of his game.

Yarde is a heavily muscled individual, who likes to rely on natural instinctual habits, counter-punching, hand speed, and power. While Yarde in his first ever attempt at a World Title performed very well against the rugged veteran Titlist in Kovalev, his lack of fundamentals and attention to detail played a pivotal role in his failure to overtake the Champion while he had Sergey in a vulnerable state late in the 8th round.

Yarde has become too engulfed in the 🗯️bubble of his own punching power, thus relying on it too much, which does a couple of things in the long run to his detriment.  For one, it stifles his ability to box consistently throughout 3 minutes of each round, and when you notice, he tends to fight sporadically in spurts during the round, putting together impressive work during those moments, but there is always a let-up in the action where he allows his opponents to get back in the groove of a fight if they are still standing by that point.

Secondly, Yarde over-bulking on muscle to cater to that power drastically 📉saps his stamina, and it was made abundantly clear as he was reduced to huffing and puffing from about round 4 on – a 🚩red flag for what is supposed to be a prime, 28 year old fresh prospect. By the end of the fight, he could barely stand up on his own feet trying to lug the muscle around, and Kovalev (the Senior man of the two by 8 years) was able to muster up the energy that Yarde couldn’t, and he put Yarde out of his misery by a shotgun jab in the 11th round.

Now before Anthony Yarde can think about what he can personally improve upon, he has to look at what went wrong, where it went wrong, and what was the cause of it going wrong. For one, he needs to analyze and take a long look at his Head-Trainer 🗣️Tunde Ajayi, who has been spearheading Yarde’s lack of preparation. For one, the Kovalev fight was easily the biggest fight of his pupils career, yet they elected not to do any training for this contest, as absurd as it sounds.

Another thing to point out is that any legitimate qualified Trainer should be able to fix or address what needs to be tightened up in the gym before it gets to the ring, not for you as s leading man to allow poor habits to continue simply because the “W”‘s continue to pile up on your record. Not once did Ajayi try to commit Yarde to any type of roadwork, or in getting his man in any type of real boxing shape so that he could lean out the muscle and get the best of both worlds with power, stamina, and speed to boot.

Lastly (with this being the most important point), Tunde Ajayi has exhibited a ridiculous amount of ignorance and arrogance whenever someone with knowledge of the sport tried to point out potential pitfalls that the instilled habits may put a fighter in, and he would often put the 🎧headphones on, tuning out any advice offered up by qualified students of the game.

He even decided to get belligerent with boxer-turned-analyst 🥇🇺🇸Andre Ward who tried to point out a few things that he needs to do as a Trainer to get the maximum result not just out of his fighter, but also of himself as a novice Trainer. That lack of listening backfired, and he blew his biggest assignment as a Trainer, not giving any legitimate guidance, blueprint, or even a calming influence between rounds when Yarde had the pressure turned up by Kovalev’s growing onslaught.

For Anthony Yarde, regarding these matters, he will have to sit down and have a long talk with Ajayi so that they can make adjustments, to get to a higher level in the sport. If Ajayi wants to continue on the path he’s been on, then it is time for Anthony Yarde to make a ↩️Managerial change. A corner undoubtedly is the 🔗extension of the fighter, as additional wisdom, eyes and hands towards fighters exploits in the ring.

Yarde needs leadership in the corner, especially considering most of what he has been able to do up to this point is solely predicated on his natural ability, which is impressive when you’re speaking behalf on the talent he has, but where-with-all and knowing what to do is equally as important as what you can physically do, so that’s where Yarde can advance his maturation process in quest to reach his full potential.

To 📌pinpoint what needs be done, he needs to get out of the 🏋️weight room, slim down/lean out the muscle, do some action road cardio work, work more on setting traps as opposed to just looking for countering opportunities, and he needs a corner that will help, guide, and allow him to make these type of necessary adjustments so that he can reach the elite plateau of the Light-Heavyweight division.