Don’t talk to Anthony Yarde about losing

They say to fully appreciate and know the true meaning of victory, one must first know how it feels to lose. Yet losses, like wins, not only come in various forms, but mean different things to different fighters. Some will experience more loss than others, and therefore grow numb to the feeling, while some will do all they can to avoid defeat entirely, with one or two even managing it.

For the unluckier types a defeat will dent confidence and change them irrevocably, whereas for others a defeat might represent no more than the bursting of pressure and the removal of shackles. In defeat, some will even find liberation. If asked to reflect on it, they will speak in fridge-magnet clichés and talk of a setback leading to a greater comeback. They never lose, they say. They only learn.

Then there are those rare types whose understanding of loss owes little to their experiences in the ring. For these fighters, defeat in a competitive sense is nothing to fear, avoid, or even speak of in grand, highfalutin terms. Instead, for them, there is a clear distinction between losing and losing. They know, for instance, that losing your luggage is not the same as losing your passport, and that losing your passport is not the same as losing your freedom. They know that losing a phone is not the same as losing contact, nor is losing a contact lens the same as losing your sight. They also know that losing track of time is not the same as running out of it.

This perspective a fighter will find only once they become familiar with loss — total loss. It is then that losing in the ring seems relatively painless. Preferred, even. It is then that the fear of defeat goes, just like that.

If in doubt, ask Britain’s Anthony Yarde, who on Saturday challenges David Benavidez for the WBC light heavyweight world title. Though Yarde has so far lost three times as a professional boxer, he carries his imperfect record of 27-3 (24 KOs) with pride and would not change a thing. He can see now that those three defeats happened for a reason and served only to make him a better fighter in the long run. He also knows that losing three fights in four years is nothing compared to losing four family members in the space of just 12 months. Experience that, which Yarde did, and you soon accept that losing to an opponent is not the same as losing yourself, and that losing yourself is not the same as losing all hope.

2019

In August 2019, Anthony Yarde was unbeaten and, like any unbeaten fighter, firmly of the belief that he was invincible and impervious to damage. He had just rejected more than $1 million in step-aside money in favor of going ahead with an ill-advised shot at WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev, despite as a pro having beaten nobody of note and boxing just 12 times as an amateur. He was, many said, taking a needless risk, one that would surely backfire and leave his career in tatters. Yet there were others, with glasses half full, who said that Yarde, at the age of 28, might as well find out the extent of his potential. To these people, fighting Kovalev — in Russia, no less — was a no-lose situation.

“With the Kovalev fight, I knew the risk,” says Yarde, who thought only of winning and was not yet acquainted with the pain of loss. “I’d never been to Russia before and I heard all these horror stories, and Kovalev was one of the two most dangerous light heavyweights at the time. But I didn’t make a fool of myself. I went for it.”

That he did. He went for Kovalev from the first bell and he also went for the knockout, sensing it might be required if he was to leave Russia with Kovalev’s WBO belt in tow. He had his moments, too, Yarde, including a huge one in Round 8 when he hurt Kovalev and appeared on the brink of doing the unthinkable.

But alas, the Londoner’s lack of experience in the end showed. That, combined with an all-round ignorance to the concept of defeat, meant that Yarde’s eighth-round blitz ultimately played into Kovalev’s hands and led to Kovalev stopping him in Round 11.

“The way it ended, I said, ‘Right, I went at the wrong time, I exerted myself, the occasion got to me, and I put too much into that eighth round,’” says Yarde. “But I learned from it. I was happy with the way it ended. I wouldn’t have wanted it to go to points.”

“Part of experience is knowing when to let go, hold back, take a breather, move around,” says Tunde Ajayi, the coach in Yarde’s corner that night in Russia. “The only way you really learn that is by being in real situations. I remember hearing Joe Calzaghe talk about the same thing after he fought [Chris] Eubank [in 1997].

“But it’s very hard to relate Ant to any of these other boxers, because a lot of them have been boxing since they were 5 years old, had hundreds of amateur fights, and were sparring professional champions when they were teenagers. These guys were pros from the beginning almost. With us, it’s a different process. He had 12 amateur fights, Ant. We’ve always been learning on the job, both of us.”

In the aftermath of that first loss, Yarde’s perception of it was clouded somewhat by his pain and his pride. In time, however, his pain inevitably eased and so too did his pride. This allowed for greater perspective — and in the end, an admission.

“The Kovalev fight had ums and ahhs about it,” he recalls. “I was never completely sure. Looking back now, I feel like it was a bit too early for me, especially because it meant I had to go to Russia. I had never headlined abroad before, so to throw myself in the deep end like that was a lot.”

“When you’re young, brash, and undefeated, you’re invincible, right?” adds Ajayi. “The only thing that can humble you is defeat. But it’s in defeat that you show your character — your strength of character.”

2020

In March 2020, Yarde and the rest of the world lost their freedom due to COVID-19, which, in Britain alone, claimed the lives of almost a quarter of a million people. There was that year not only a significant loss of life, but a loss, too, of identity and purpose, with most of us unable to do many of the things we had taken for granted and come to rely on.

In Yarde’s case, that meant boxing. For a time he lost that, or at least the ability to do it, and only having lost it did he realize how vital boxing was as both an outlet and a coping mechanism in his day-to-day life.

By the time he could box again, in September, never had boxing been more important and yet also meaningless for Yarde. By the time he returned to the ring, in a 10-round fight against Dec Spelman, two of Yarde’s family members, including his father, had died due to COVID-19. Now it wasn’t defeat that Yarde feared. It was something much worse.

“During lockdown I kept myself occupied with training, then had my fight against Dec Spelman,” he recalls. “I was feeling a bit weird. I stopped him [in Round 6] and even went on the top rope and screamed, but there was no crowd. It was like an outpouring of emotion for me. Finally, I thought, something good has come from this year.

“I had a very short-lived celebration and then a death happened just after that. Then there was another one shortly after that.”

In total, Yarde would lose four members of his family to COVID-19. He would also lose a piece of himself.

“That was very difficult,” says Ajayi, whose relationship with Yarde goes back to day one. “With me and Ant, we’re both alpha males. In the gym we’re so strong. We’re both leaders in our own respect — sometimes that’s why we argue. But when you become attached to somebody, it’s not just talk, it’s feeling. You feel it. You feel when the vibe ain’t right, the frequency ain’t right, and the energy ain’t right.

“A week before he fought Lyndon Arthur [in December 2020], I said, ‘Ant, we need to pull out of this fight.’ He was going to the funerals, coming back to the gym, and it was mad. But he was like, ‘No, I’ve got to do this. It’s a fight. We’ve got to fight. We can’t let the people down. I’m a fighter — this is what we do.’ I only said it once and Ant jumped down my throat.”

Because it was all Yarde knew, he couldn’t imagine a world without boxing, especially now. It was, to his mind, the only thing that could provide the kind of physical pain sufficient to counteract the emotional pain he was experiencing at that time.

“I told myself, ‘You know what, you’ve got to be professional,’” he says. “Where I come from, some people didn’t make it to see their 18th birthday. I’m in a position where I’ve got this opportunity. We’re in a pandemic, I’ve lost family members, and I have this chance to fight. That was my mindset. But as soon as the fight finished, I said to myself, ‘I should never have been in the ring.’”

That night against Arthur, Yarde entered the ring a human being. He was thinking too much, feeling too much, and he had, despite his best efforts, failed to purge the kind of human emotions no boxer ever wants to take into the ring as baggage on fight night. As a result of this, Yarde lost for the second time as a pro. This time it was unexpected. An upset. This time, Yarde felt nothing at all.

“After the fight, everything came down on top of him,” says Ajayi. “It was an emotional breakdown, because he had been holding so much inside. You lose your dad and your grandads and you would struggle to function, much less get in a boxing ring. Go and watch the fight and you’ll see him walk back to the wrong corner after the first or second round. His body was there but his mind wasn’t.”

Yarde knew it, too.

“I remember during fight week telling myself the reason I was feeling emotional was because I was making weight and not eating the food I wanted to eat,” he says. “I was ignoring it. But usually when I’m making weight, I want to eat more. This time I was like, ‘I’m not even hungry.’ My mum’s saying to me, ‘Do you want to eat?’ But I didn’t. I’d go days without eating, and then when I did eat, it was just a little bit of food. I was losing weight easily but not in a healthy way.

“I’m then sitting in the hotel room during fight week and looking at old pictures. Usually, I don’t do that. On fight week I’m very focused, I’m watching war movies and I’m getting ready to fight. That fight week was so hard for me, but I kept it to myself.

“Then, when I was in the ring, there’s no crowd to cheer or get me in my mode. I’m hearing my sister’s voice. I’m hearing Lyndon Arthur’s cheerleaders. It turned into a different thing. I didn’t even feel I was in a fight that night.”

Yarde wouldn’t make peace with that second pro loss until he avenged it a year later, stopping Arthur in just four rounds. The two fights, in truth, could not have made for a starker contrast. In fight one we all watched Yarde struggle to function for 12 rounds, while in the rematch, 12 months on, he set about Arthur from the get-go and finished him before the halfway mark.

The other losses that year were not so easily fixed, however.

“When I spoke about my loss publicly, I knew what it would come with,” Yarde says. “But my mindset at the time was that I was in lockdown, I was, you could say, borderline depressed, and I said to myself, ‘Why don’t I be an inspiration for some people? Let me show that you can go through things like tragedies and still be a professional.’

“But it was probably the worst thing I could have done. It brought so much attention to the situation. It made it harder for me to get over it, because whenever I saw someone on the street, they would shout from the bus, ‘Anthony Yarde, condolences for the loss of your dad!’

“Every time they would say that, it was like a reminder. Oh yeah, s***, my dad’s dead. Or, oh s***, my grandad’s dead. Or, oh s***, my nan’s dead. Or, oh s***, my other nan’s dead. I’d be in a good mood and then I’d see somebody who would remind me. I did what I did for the right reason, and they’re saying what they’re saying for the right reason, but it doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

“Some people don’t understand it’s a sensitive situation. Some people will just be blunt and say, ‘I’m sorry your dad’s dead.’ One time a guy actually said that to me. He didn’t mean it in a bad way, but I was literally laughing about it as I walked off.”

2023

In January 2023, Yarde was back challenging a Russian again for the world light heavyweight title. On this occasion the opponent was Artur Beterbiev, a Russian even scarier than the last, and on the line were three belts — WBC, IBF and WBO — rather than just one.

Those differences aside, the fight with Beterbiev hit all the same notes as the one against Kovalev, from its inception to its conclusion. It was, again, a risk Yarde had felt big and brave enough to take, while his performance on the night was good enough to enhance his reputation but not quite good enough to land him the world titles.

Stopped in the eighth round this time, Yarde would have no doubt kept fighting had it not been for Ajayi, in Yarde’s corner, throwing in the towel once noticing signs those less familiar with Yarde might have overlooked.

“First off, he doesn’t ever think of losing,” Ajayi stresses, lest we mistake a no-fear mindset for an unconfident one. “There’s no thought in his mind, or my mind, that we’re losing. We went to Russia with a winning mentality, and we went in with Beterbiev with a winning mentality. Remember, we made Beterbiev look human. Nobody was calling out Beterbiev before us. They were scared of him. But after Ant made him look human, a few more started to fancy it. Because of us, Callum Smith took that fight [in 2024].

“Also,” Ajayi says, “go look at Beterbiev’s opponents. Marcus Browne basically retired after fighting him, and so did [Oleksandr] Gvozdyk and Joe Smith Jr. At the very least, they were never the same. This guy ruins people. But not Anthony Yarde. He took that loss and he grew because of it. He’s a lot more experienced now.”

2025

On Saturday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Yarde tries for a third time to win light heavyweight gold when he fights Benavidez, an American rather than a Russian, for the WBC title. Like Kovalev and Beterbiev in his two previous attempts, Yarde fights Benavidez when few fancy his chances or indeed would fancy the challenge themselves. He is, in other words, going to that place again, where only the fearless dare to tread and where pain, if not defeat, is almost an inevitability.

Yarde, as if bracing himself for that inevitability, has predicted that Saturday’s fight with Benavidez will be a “shootout.” His coach, meanwhile, takes issue with anyone calling this fight “third time lucky.”

“You don’t go down the same dangerous road three times and hope for luck at any point,” Ajayi says. “It’s the third time of asking, not third time lucky. There is no luck involved here.

“Nobody wants to lose, but the thing is, we’re not afraid of losing. That’s the difference. In the mirror you’ve got to say to yourself, ‘I did it. The whole experience, I did it. I went to all these places, fought the best guys, and I experienced every aspect of it. I did all that because I wasn’t afraid.’”

In some cases, loss creates a certain vulnerability in a person and leaves them susceptible to more pain and loss in the future. In others, though, a toughening can come from pain and from struggle which can be advantageous in moments of either doubt or disappointment.

“As you go through life you either get stronger or weaker,” says Yarde. “If you do survive the bad, life has a way of then strengthening you. I try not to overcomplicate things. If you look at nature, most things that are broken will, if you let it heal properly, grow back stronger. Teeth fall out when you’re a child and then grow back as adult teeth. You break a bone and, if it heals properly, it grows back stronger. It’s the same with experiences in life. Hardship has just conditioned me to become stronger and deal with it better in the future.”

“It’s not an ordinary person who comes back the way Anthony has come back,” adds Ajayi. “He went through a lot but he has grown stronger from the experience. The only way you learn is through experience. That goes for both boxing and life. He’s a very, very strong individual. I’d be blessed to ever meet somebody with this kind of mental strength again in my life. When Ant buckles up his shoes and says, ‘OK, let’s see who is going to win this,’ I know what happens. Ant is the winner. So we’re going to see if it’s that kind of feeling on Nov. 22.”

Although Yarde and Ajayi have both experienced a fair amount of loss in the past six years, to know that the feeling is back must, for them, be the cause of great comfort, relief and encouragement. Because to feel anything is a vast improvement on feeling nothing. To feel, after all, is to be alive. It is to have hope — a chance, a shot. It reminds Anthony Yarde of what he now stands to gain, not what he has lost.