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Top Rank’s CEO Bob Arum, who promotes light heavyweight champions Artur Beterbiev and Joe Smith, says the winner of their upcoming fight will face mandatory challenger Anthony Yarde next.
Smith and Beterbiev will collide on Saturday night at the Hulu Theater in Madison Square Garden – with the WBO, IBF, WBC world titles at stake.
Yarde is the WBO’s mandatory challenger and aims to fight the winner before the end of the year.
If Beterbiev wins, the fight with Yarde will likely take place in a big venue in the UK.
But if Smith wins, the fight could happen in the UK or at MSG in New York City.
After the conclusion of Saturday’s fight, Arum will sit down with Yarde’s promoter, Frank Warren, to work out the details.
“Yarde will be next assuming Artur wins this big fight. And his chance will come in England in a huge fight for the UK. I also expect Yarde will get his chance if Smith wins here but that might complicate the choice of venue. [Team Smith] might want to bring it to the Garden. But However it goes this Saturday I will be working with Frank Warren to sort it out,” Arum told Daily Mail.
Yarde has a world title shot against then WBO champion Sergey Kovalev in 2019. During the fight, Yarde has Kovalev in serious trouble and came close to knocking him out, but the British puncher ran out of gas and was stopped in the eleventh round.
Yarde would hit another snag in 2020, when he lost a razor-close split decision to domestic rival Lyndon Arthur.
He would get revenge a year later, with a vicious knockout of Artur in four rounds. For the moment, Yarde plans to sit on the sidelines to face the Beterbiev-Smith winner by year’s end.