Artur Beterbiev vs. Anthony Yarde fight results, highlights: Unified light heavyweight champ retains with TKO

Unified world light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev traveled to hostile territory on Saturday to face Anthony Yarde of London. Although Beterbiev emerged as the favourite, he had to go through eight rounds of the fight before finally landing two right hands that put Yard on the canvas and put Yard in the corner to stop the fight.

Yarde (23-3, 22 KOs) was successful in the early rounds, starting the fight with his feet, moving around the ring and forcing Beterbiev (19-0, 19 KOs) to chase him. Yarde was also able to land some hard shots while Beterbiev tried to track him down. This movement-based style faded somewhat in the second round when Beterbiev landed his first big punch of the fight.

Yarde attempted to respond to Beterbiev’s success by engaging in a brief firefight and never returned to moving around the ring as Beterbiev gained more and more success with both body and head shots.

By the fourth round, Yarde looked like he was starting to get tired, which was a worrying sign for the Englishman, who lost his first world title opportunity when he ran out of gas against Sergey Kovalev in 2019. Despite being tired, Yarde kept trying and succeeded and landed some big bombs in round 5, but Beterbiev roared back with a powerful combination in the closing seconds of the frame.

Both men were bleeding from cuts at the end of round 6 as the drama continued to build with momentum waxing and waning as they traded big punches, including some wild exchanges in round seven along the ropes.

A Beterbiev right hand in round 8 sent Yard tripping before a subsequent right hand sent him to the canvas. Yard didn’t look good when he got to his feet to beat the score. As Beterbiev approached the finish line, corner Yarde stood on the canvas and called for the fight to be stopped, awarding Beterbiev a hard-fought TKO victory in a fantastic fight.

With this win, Beterbiev not only retained his WBC, WBO and IBF titles, but also took care of business as he moved closer to fighting WBA champion Dmitry Bivol to crown the undisputed 175-pound champion. In his post-match interview, Beterbiev called the fight the way he wanted.

“I am looking for my next job,” Beterbiev said. “I think this job is more enjoyable than the other. I want her. Now that’s all. We have four belts in this fight. It’s a really good fight.”

As for Yard, he has now lost twice on throws to become a world champion, although he may have increased his margin by harassing Beterbiev from time to time and getting many well-placed hits from a man who is known as one of the best finishers in boxing.