Ring IV’s main event clash turned out to be a massacre with WBC light heavyweight champion David Benavidez (31-0, 25 KOs) knocking out the game challenger Anthony Yarde (27-4, 24 KOs) in round seven at the ANB Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
(Credit: Queensberry/Leigh Dawney)
Despite the fight only lasting seven rounds, it was the most entertaining one on tonight’s Riyadh Season card. Yarde fought like a warrior, landing big shots to the head and body of ‘The Mexican Monster’ Benavidez that would cause him to pause.
Unfortunately for Yarde, Benavidez always answered back in combinations, throwing machine gun-type blows at full speed. The left hooks that Yarde had landed to stun former unified light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev in his previous world title challenge in 2023 were nowhere to be seen tonight.
Benavidez took advantage of Yarde’s single-shot style of fighting by letting loose with a blizzard of punches in round seven, cutting him, bloodying his nose, and sending him to the canvas in a heap. Benavidez continued to fire while Yarde was down.
At first, the referee looked like he wasn’t going to do anything, but after Yarde motioned about the late hit, he called a timeout and penalized Benavidez. The brief timeout wasn’t enough time for Yarde to recover from having taken so much punishment in the round.
When the action resumed, Benavidez buried Yarde with another flurry of punches, leaving referee Hector Afu with no option but to step in and stop the fight. The official time of the stoppage was at 1:59 of round 7.
The mistake that Yarde made tonight was repeatedly retreating to the ropes and shelling up rather than staying in the center of the ring where he was doing reasonably well. By fighting with his back against the ropes, he was a sitting duck for Benavidez to unload on with his speedy punches.
In hindsight, this was the worst thing for Yarde to do, but he’d fought way in the past in his losses to Beterbiev and Sergey Kovalev. It’s something that he does do to his stamina issues.