British light-heavyweight Anthony Yarde’s third shot at a world title ended in heartbreak again after a systematic beat-down by WBC champion David Benavidez in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
After a slow start, American Benavidez seized control, sending 34-year-old Yarde to the canvas with a barrage in the seventh. <\/p>\n
With blood streaming from Yarde’s nose and smeared across the canvas, another heavy flurry of punches with a minute left in the round forced the referee to halt the contest.<\/p>\n
“I stuck in there. I’m a fighter,” Yarde told BBC Radio 5 Live. <\/p>\n
“I felt like it was competitive. I know how he comes with good pressure. I was boxing, boxing, thinking middle rounds, the dog rounds, we would exchange.<\/p>\n
“He has quick hands, caught me first and hit me with a good shot on the nose. When I took a knee and he hit me when I was down, I was dizzy after that.”<\/p>\n
Benavidez was deducted two points for punches while Yarde was down, but the outcome was already inevitable.<\/p>\n
The Londoner – having previously lost in world championship bouts to Sergey Kovalev in 2019 and Artur Beterbiev in 2022 – may now have to accept the possibility that a world title might elude him.<\/p>\n
Benavidez, 28, remains unbeaten and extends his record to a formidable 25 knockouts in 31 wins.<\/p>\n
After the fight, Benavidez – of Mexican heritage – revealed he plans to move up to cruiserweight to challenge Mexico’s Gilberto Ramirez for the WBA and WBO cruiserweight titles on 2 May, aiming to become a three-weight world champion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British light-heavyweight Anthony Yarde’s third shot at a world title ended in heartbreak again after a systematic beat-down…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-278396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}