LOSS AND RECOVERY

IT WOULD seem glib and perhaps cruel to define Anthony Yarde’s past 12 months as a comeback story when the story sadly involves so much loss – and total loss at that. Yet, even in boxing, this sweatshop of redemption tales, there have been few as compelling in recent years.

Twelve months ago, while preparing to fight British light-heavyweight rival Lyndon Arthur, Yarde contemplated withdrawing from the fight on account of pain he experienced during training. It was with him in the gym, it was with him on the roads, and it was also with him at home, when at rest. Unlike pain of old, it was pervasive, this pain. It could not be soothed with painkillers or days off, nor could it be treated by medical experts and given some sort of prognosis or time by which it may pass.

Worst of all, it was not boxer’s pain but instead human pain. It was something other, something foreign. It was the kind of pain not only new to Yarde but the kind of pain for which there would be no sick note or even a clear way of articulating it, at least not to those unable to understand or relate to it. This, alas, meant that Yarde, though feeling more pain than he had ever felt, would fight his fight nonetheless.

For his pain, after all, was nothing physical. The death of four loved ones, including his father, due to COVID 19 would not, in theory, stop Yarde punching someone or competing for something. All it did was make him human – a fate far worse for any boxer about to fight.

“Rather than feeling physical pain, it was emotional pain,” he explained. “But I told myself, ‘You know