Boxing Results: Lyndon Arthur defeats Anthony Yarde

By Boxing News - 12/05/2020 - Comments

By Doug Gillen: Undefeated Commonwealth light heavyweight champion Lyndon Arthur (17-0, 12 KOs) boxed a masterclass in defeating former world title challenger Anthony Yarde (20-2, 19 KOs) by a 12 round split decision on Saturday night at the iconic Church House in London, England.

Using just his jab, Arthur, 29, outboxed Yarde in the same way that Joe Joyce did with Daniel Dubois last night in winning a surprisingly easy fashion.

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Yarde, 29, looked lost the entire fight and showed no improvement from his defeat last year against the former WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev in August 2019.

Although the scores failed to indicate how one-sided the fight was, it was a clear victory for Arthur. Boxing News 24 had Arthur winning 119-109

The judge’s scores were as follows:

  • 115-114 – Arthur
  • 115-114 – Arthur
  • 117-111 – Yarde

It’s unclear what the hold up was for Yarde, as he looked confused and scared to try and push past the weak jab that Arthur was continually pumping out in front of him.

Arthur wasn’t even using his right hand during the fight, which gave the appearance that he may have had an arm or hand injury of some sort.

For Arthur not to even use his right hand the entire fight, it had injury written all over it. But this is something that Yarde and his trainer should have seen early on and gone on the attack.

With Yarde’s punching power, he should have no problems overwhelming Arthur with his weak jab to win, but he didn’t even try. Yarde looked like a shell-shocked fighter who couldn’t go on the attack the way he needed to for him to beat a one-armed fighter with a weak jab.

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“It’s a little bit sore, but it had nothing to do with the fight,” Arthur said after the contest. “He hit me with a body shot in the last round, but that was the only one I thought I lost the last round heavily.

“The whole fight, I pressed the fight,” said Yarde. “He caught me with a few jabs. At one point, I was out-jabbing him because they said he had a good jab. In the last two rounds, he caught me with two right hands throughout the whole fight. I almost knocked him out in the end. I rocked him heavy.”

“Nothing really got through apart from the jabs,” said Arthur. “The fight was close. If the points had gone to his side, I wouldn’t have said, ‘It’s a robbery.'”

“Lyndon isn’t going to lie to nobody; there were parts where it was close,” said Yarde. “But if you looked at who was landing the cleaner more effective punches, he was landing jabs, and I was landing my own jabs. I got to go and watch it again,” Yarde said when asked if he could have done more.

“This is boxing; you don’t want to go out there and be reckless. But what I know what happened in the ring, I landed the cleaner [shots], and I was pressing the whole fight. Again, this sums up 2020 for me.

“I’ll go back and watch it again. I’ve got a strong personality, and I strongly feel that it was a robbery. I don’t like to scream robbery, but I feel like I won the fight,” said Yarde.

“I just feel like his defense was good, and I didn’t feel like he was there,” Arthur said when asked why he didn’t throw his right hand more in the fight.

“He knows why he didn’t throw his right hand more; it’s boxing,” said Yarde. “A couple of times, he did throw the right hand, and he got countered. Obviously, the judges can’t see that.”

“I did catch him with a right hand,” said Arthur. “He caught me a few times as he said, but I felt like I landed the right hand as well. It’s just business. We can have a rematch. Of course, why wouldn’t I?” said Arthur when asked if he’d be interested in giving Yarde a rematch.

“I’m not taking it as a defeat,” said Yarde. “There’s learning to be done. I personally think that I didn’t lose the right.”

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In the second half of the fight, Yarde put a little more pressure on Arthur, but not as much as he needed to. Arthur moved around the ring in circles, throwing a jab and leaning back to avoid Yarde’s power shots.

Yarde’s loss tonight was a huge blow to his career, and it’s going to be difficult for him to come back from this. What he needs is a new trainer that can try and make some quick improvements in his game.

Yarde will be 30 soon, and there’s not a lot of time for him to learn all the things that he should have already been taught.

In other boxing results on the card:

Undefeated super bantamweight prospect Chris Bourke (9-0, 6 KOs) defeated journeyman  Michael Ramabeletsa (18-18, 8 KOs) by a second-round knockout. Bourke dropped Ramabeletsa two times before the contest was stopped.

Bantamweight prospect Dennis McCann (8-0, 5 KOs) beat Pedro Matos (7-4, 1 KO) by an eight-round points decision. Referee Marcus McDonnell scored 80-73.

Undefeated 2016 Olympian Muhammad Ali (2-0) beat journeyman Jamie Quinn (7-106-2, 0 KOs) by a six-round decision. The score was 60-55.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qrKefd10f0