Anthony Yarde shared a heartwarming moment with Artur Beterbiev as the pair got stitches together following their thrilling world title fight.
Beterbiev defended his light-heavyweight world titles by stopping Yarde in the eighth round of their fight at the Wembley Arena on Saturday night. The Russian extended his unbeaten record to 19 fights and kept up his 100 per cent knockout rate with the win, whilst Yarde suffered the third defeat of his professional career.
Both men were marked up after the fight as the left eye of Yarde was considerably swollen whilst Beterbiev was also bruised and had a cut above his left eye. Yarde posted a video of him and Beterbiev getting stitches backstage after their fight, with the Brit stating: "It's part of the game. Just had my stitches, Artur's getting his stitches. It's part of the game."
Yarde missed out on his chance to become a world champion for the second time after coming up short against Sergey Kovalev for the WBO light-heavyweight title in 2019. Beterbiev thinks the Brit is still growing as a fighter and has the potential to win a world title in the future.
"He's a good guy, I wished him well in the future and said he still has time because he is 31. Today is a win for me and it's an experience for him. He is young and has the potential to be a world champion, he got knocked out today but this is a good experience," Beterbiev said.
Yarde was ahead on the scorecards before being brutally knocked out, as judge Jun Bae Lim scored five of the seven rounds in his favour. Judge Robin Taylor had Yarde ahead by one round whilst Jerome Lades had it 67-66 in favour of Beterbiev. Official punch stats show that Beterbiev outlanded Yarde across the eight rounds.
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"There was only eight rounds, so I can't show my performance I think. To be honest, I was just beginning to wake up in these rounds. You never know how the fight is going, you can have a strategy and scenarios but you never know. He fought a good fight, to be honest I didn't do everything like I wanted in the fight," Beterbiev added.
Yarde was in good spirits after the defeat as he told BT Sport: "I'm very ambitious, I've got a winner's mentality. I really wanted to win and bring home the unified championship of the world, but that's boxing. I've grown a lot since the loss to Kovalev, but in boxing sometimes God gives these battles to the strongest of warriors."
