Anthony Yarde rebounded from his bruising defeat to Artur Beterbiev on Saturday night, breezing past the overmatched Jorge Silva inside two rounds.
Beterbiev may have stopped Yarde in the eighth round back in January but the Londoner gave the unified light heavyweight champion all he could handle through seven exciting rounds.
Yarde (24-3, 23 KO’s) was originally slated to return against Ricky Summers but the former English 175lb champion’s late withdrawal left the Queensberry matchmakers scrambling for a replacement.
Silva answered the call and Yarde made predictably short work of the 40 year old Portuguese fighter. Nonetheless, the outing served its purpose and Yarde can now readjust his sights too much bigger targets.
On October 21st, British, Commonwealth and European champion, Dan Azeez, takes on Joshua Buatsi in an eye-catching and important light heavyweight clash. The winner will have their eyes fixed firmly on a world title shot but a clash with Yarde might just prove too lucrative to turn down.
“It’s good to be back. I haven’t been in the ring for nine months,” Yarde told Queensberry. “Buatsi is fighting Dan Azeez in October so – hopefully – I can squeeze one more in before the end of the year and then next year I want to fight the winner.
“Destroy them,” Yarde confidently stated when asked what he would do to with Buatsi or Azeez.
“I don’t put times on things but it’s about that time to be in big fights and if its not world title fights, thats the one.”
Yarde boxed just once in the year before his unsuccessful shot at then WBO champion, Sergey Kovalev, in 2019 and just once in the 12 months which separated his impressive rematch victory over Lyndon Arthur and his shot at Beterbiev. The 32 year old will be all too aware that he needs to grasp his next major opportunity and this time he wants to make sure that he bounces into it – be it a third attempt at a world title or the winner of Azeez-Buatsi – with real momentum behind him.
“Keep me active. I don’t wanna be waiting around for nobody,” he said. “That fight [Azeez-Buatsi] could happen in October and then they could try and push it on [the fight with Yarde]. Hopefully we can fight Ricky Summers. He was meant to fight this fight but he said he was injured. That’s another fight and then hopefully next year we can get it popping with big fights.”