Anthony Yarde Dominates, Wipes Out Nikolic in Three Rounds

London – With Joshua Buatsi sat at ringside, Anthony Yarde (25-3, 24 KO’s) decided to put on a show. The 32-year-old barely broke a sweat and took apart Marko Nikolic (32-4, 12 KO’s) inside three one sided rounds. 

Buatsi enjoyed a career best victory last Saturday when he took the British and Commonwealth light heavy titles away from Dan Azeez via a hard fought unanimous decision and became the mandatory challenger for Dmitry Bivol’s WBA title.

With Bivol set to unify the division against WBC, IBF and WBO champion Artur Beterbiev on June 1st, momentum has quickly built behind a potential meeting between the London rivals and the two-time world title challenger did his part by the wildly outmatched Serbian.

Yarde was clearly too quick and too athletic for the awkward looking Nikolic and found the right hand to the body at will. 

A minute into the second round a right hand landed high on Nikolic’s head and the shock took a couple of seconds to reach his legs. He went down to the canvas in instalments but wasn’t too badly hurt. That changed a few seconds later when Yarde picked a picture-perfect left hook to the liver. Nikolic forced himself back to his feet, dug his feet into the canvas and swung away but was beaten to the punch time and time again. 

The end was nigh. A right uppercut to the pit of the stomach dropped Nikolic to the canvas and referee Lee Every correctly stopped the fight after 1.15 of the third round. 

Yarde did exactly what a fighter of his calibre is supposed to do with an opponent like Nikolic and got rid of him in no-nonsense fashion.

All eyes will now turn towards a showdown between Yarde and Buatsi this summer.