Former light-heavyweight champion, Sergey Kovalev, had his say on Anthony Yarde’s title challenge against the knockout machine, Artur Beterbiev.
The match takes place in London this weekend and marks Yarde’s second time winning the world title – meeting Kovalev for the first time in 2019.
The British tennis player went to the heart of Russia – Chelyabinsk – to face the champion in front of his home audience, and almost turned the tide with a goal in the 1/8 round. Kovalev weathered that storm and went on to finish Yarde in eleventh place.
He has now offered his thoughts on Yarde’s efforts to dethrone Beterbiev to Ring TV IQ — and he’s letting him down again.
“Anthony Yarde is not ready to fight Artur Beterbiev right now because he has not had the test like in real matches. When he fought me, I ran out of energy because I lost a lot of weight for lightweight. I should have moved on to the next division because I couldn’t get to 175 and 2019 for me was the hardest year of my boxing career.
“I think it will be an interesting fight, but in my opinion, Artur will take him down. I was in trouble against Anthony Yarde. I had trouble at round seven or eight because I was drained of energy due to weight loss. I have lost more than 15 pounds to this fight. He can’t stop me.
What I think is that, Artur will finish him off in the middle of the battle. That’s your right. I’m also interested in watching this. In my opinion, Artur is naturally strong and mentally he has a very, very big foundation in two Olympics and world championships. He is more experienced and mentally older than Anthony Yarde.”
With all but one of Yarde’s victories being by knockout, and Beterbiev is the only defending world champion to have won every one of his professional competitions by stop, it is expected to be a fire.
UK fans can tune in via Sports BTand those in the US will find the action on ESPN+.
