By Tim Royner: Undefeated light heavyweight contender Anthony Yarde (17-0, 16 KOs) stayed undefeated in beating Argentinian journeyman Walter Gabriel Sequeira (21-5, 15 KOs) by a 4th round knockout win on Saturday night
Yarde, 27, knocked the Argentinian Sequeira down three times in the 4th round before the fight was finally halted. The bout was surprisingly competitive with Sequeira landing a lot of shots. However, once Yarde started to connect with his right hand beginning in the 3rd, it was only a matter of time before he stopped him.
Ranked #2 with the World Boxing Organization, Yarde is within distance of a title shot against WBO light heavyweight champion Eleider Alvarez. But he’s going to need to take on better opposition than Sequeira if he wants to be ready for a fighter like Alvarez.
At this point, Yard would be hard-pressed to hand some of the bottom 15 contenders in the 175 lb division like Felix Valera, Sullivan Barrera, Robert Parzecezewski, Adam Deines or Reagan Dessaix. It’s questionable whether Yarde could beat any of those fighters. He’s too easy to hit, and his punch resistance isn’t what it needs to be for him to beat guys like that.
Yarde has been in the position previously to get a world title shot, but didn’t pull the trigger on the fight. You have to wonder how long he’s going to wait before he eventually fights for a title.
Domestic level welterweight Johnny Garton (23-1-1, 10 KOs) defeated Gary Corcoran by an 11th round knockout victory in a battle for the vacant British welterweight belt. Garton unloaded on Corcoran after hurting him in the 11th round, forcing referee Steve Gray to halt the fight. The official time of the stoppage was at 0:42 of round 11.
Corcoran was halted in the 11th round by former World Boxing Organization welterweight champion Jeff Horn last December. Horn and Top Rank took a lot of criticism from boxing fans for the selection of Corcoran to defend his title against, as he’d never done anything with his career to deserve a world title shot. It just looked to some like Horn was milking his title by facing a guy he knew he could beat.
Middleweight Joe Mullender (11-2, 5 KOs) defeated Ben Capps (15-5-2, 7 KOs) by a 7th round knockout.
Super middleweight Zak Chelli (5-0, 2 KOs) defeated Umar Sadiq (3-1, 1 KO) by an eight round decision. The score was 77-74. Sadiq was down once in the fight in the 6th.
Unbeaten heavyweight prospect Nathan Gorman (14-0, 11 KOs) defeated journeyman Kamil Sokolowski (5-13-2, 2 KOs). The score was 79-73. It ws moral victory for Sokolowski to go the distance.
Welterweight Bradley Skeete (28-2, 13 KOs) defeated journeyman Fernando Valencia (8-7, 4 KOs) by a 3rd round knockout.
The card was a pretty terrible one from top to bottom. It’s too bad that there weren’t any interesting fights for the boxing fans, but it looks like this is all the management could scrape together.