Are you trolling? Nigel Benn was stopped by a jab against Watson off the stop of my head...he didn’t go on to have to bad a career. He was fighting in Russia, extremley inexperienced and emptied the tank trying to get Kovalev out a few rounds beforehand. He had also taken big right hands and hard jabs throughout the fight. He was absolutely knackered - he could have been knocked down by a feather at that point. It was just fortunate, the boxing Gods spared him having to take a power shot at that point, as Tunde should have pulled him out in the corner.
It’s not getting bingo’d by a jab that’s the problem for Yarde, it was why he was exhausted....which was a terrible lack of preparation in being fed a conveyor belt of super middleweight puddings whom never asked him any questions, made him dig deep or even made him adjust his pace. He didn’t break a sweat. In fact he’d never gone beyond round 7...then he gets chucked into deep end against a faded Kovalev. How do you go into a world title fight against that level of opponent without even knowing if you can comfortably do 12 rounds? With that in mind, Lyndon Arthur going two 12 rounds in succession seems like a good bit of preparation to me. He knows he can do 12 no problem now....Yarde still doesn’t know, because he was blowing a gasket after 8 rounds against Kovalev. Arthur‘s no Kovalev but his footwork and jab would have Yarde struggling to set himself and gassing.
Arthur is/will be just a stepping stone for Yarde, it's more time to waste while Yarde and Warren wait for the big boys to move on, lose, retire or whatever. They have to give Yarde "meaningful" fights now, you can't go from Kovalev and a world title shot back to a list of no names and lower tier domestic rivals. So they have a problem, but they have decided to create a rival rather than risking another defeat against a legit domestic rival, so Arthur is the man, he has a "0" and will talk some trash.. all very predictable and see through. Yarde came out of the Kovalev fight with a profile bump, people were talking about him, some good, some bad but they were talking. Instead of talking about a quick turn around, maybe targeting another champion they have gone back to domestic level and Yarde seems very comfortable about doing it.
I put it down to Yarde being absolutely gassed at that point. Should probably lose some of that unnecessary muscle.
But he still got stopped with a jab. It's beyond embarrassing. Getting stopped at world level BY A JAB means you've conned your way to that level, IMHO.
You could well be proved to be right...but what as Yarde done to prove that he’s a level above Arthur? I just don’t see what others see in Yarde. His record is massively padded.
I think it is a good fight and agree it will be interesting. Fight makes total sense and I look forward to it. Arthur should have went up a gear on Friday to get the ko and help build the fight. It does not help for casuals but for real boxing fans it is still a good fight and Arthur showed good skills on Friday and got 12 rounds in the bank. So if he can take yarde's power we will see how he is over the distance. With how heavily muscled he is I think he might tire.
