Manchester’s Lyndon Arthur says he feels miscast as the ‘boxer’ in his Commonwealth 175lbs title defence against the heavy-handed Anthony Yarde at Church House, Westminster, tonight.
Champion Arthur insists he can bang in his own right and that a boxing clinic over shared opponent Dec Spelman has proven misleading when assessing Saturday night’s encounter.
Arthur (17-0, 12 KOs) outboxed Spelman in July before Yarde forced a six-round stoppage just five weeks later, but the champion says no-one should underestimate his punching power. Yarde (20-1, 19 KOs) labelled Arthur’s win over Spelman ‘boring’ in the immediate aftermath, which seemed a harsh assessment at the time.
“I can punch too! Everyone keeps saying this. Do you want to feel my punches?” said Arthur. “Everyone keeps saying I can’t punch and it is starting to piss me off. It is just that I can box as well.”I believe I beat Spelman better because I am a ‘me’ fan, a Lyndon fan. Yarde did well but we have seen it many times and we knew what he would do. I’d already beaten [Spelman].
“When I fought him and it was the winner gets to fight Yarde, he was coming in on my fight week, on my interviews and was just around. Then the loser fought him. For what purpose?
“The day he fought Dec Spelman he could have fought me, so I thought it was a pointless fight and he was going to beat him and prove to himself he could knock out someone who everybody knows he could knock out – after I had already beaten him.
“Go and fight somebody else. It made no sense to me,” continued Arthur. “So it was boring because I didn’t get hit? [Yarde] likes to say ‘I knock people out and it’s entertainment’ but it depends what boxing you like. For me watching it back it was a fun fight to watch. If you like boxing you’ll watch that fight and like it. You’ll see certain skills in there that you will like, while if you just like knockouts, you’ll watch Yarde.
“He has had better marketing than me and is bigger than me in the sense that he’s had the [Sergey] Kovalev fight and the backing of BT a little bit more than me. Really and truly, when it comes down to it, it doesn’t make a difference. We’re both going to get in the ring and that is where it matters.”
Main image: Queensberry Promotions.