Where does Yarde go from here?

Yarde is a lot better than most of us were giving him credit for. Lets be clear about that. With his lack of experience, he did fantastic against Kovalev.

However if you judge him against the 3 elite champions of the division, who are both above Kovalev at this point. He is never going to reach that level, and he cant wait for them to get old because Bivol is the same age as him and Gvozdyk is only 4 years older.

I would say he is in that fringe world class level based on that performance. Definitely top 15 perhaps top 10.

He will have a soft touch next for sure. After that in order to make the most money he needs to be facing the likes of Callum Johnson and Joshua Buatsi. He doesnt have a 0 to protect, and he needs to be in the big fights we want to see now.

 

It's a weird one because you could say he took a lot of shots from Kovalev somehow proving his toughness, but he got proper KO'd with a goddamn jab. How can you truly have elite potential if you get KO'd with a jab like that in a championship fight, even a power jab. Kov was landing a lot but mainly jabs and mid power shots, combos, not flush RH's. And Kov's power does seem to fade as he gasses, as Ward mentioned. That makes being KO'd with a jab at the end of the fight pretty bad.

Also Yarde's 'massive' power is questionable. He was landing flush winging shots on Kov through that 8th or whatever and I couldn't believe how many shots Kov was taking. Would Kov take those shots from other big punchers at LHW, I highly doubt it. Would he take them from supers Groves or Callum Smith, I doubt it. Bradley also noted how the hook wasn't really doing anything.

Anyway, when the dust settles, he got KO'd by a jab. Fury got up from a flush RH/LH from Wilder and fought on in the 12th. Even Yarde's hype twin Joshua got up four times from power combos. Yarde got KO'd by a jab.

 

Zurdo

 

KO'd by a jab due to being exhausted. More variables to a knockout other than just a weak chin. Saying that, my reaction at the time was the same as yours