Fighting in Russia won’t scare me . . . I’ve had guns pulled on me in Hackney
ANTHONY YARDE INTERVIEW
ASK Anthony Yarde about going to deepest, darkest industrial Russia to face the sledgehammer puncher known as Krusher in front of thousands of his glowering fellow citizens of Chelyabinsk in the Traktor Arena and he answers rhetorically.
‘Hostile environment?’ he says with a wry smile. ‘I was born in Hackney.’
The 27-year-old light-heavyweight who challenges world champion Sergey Kovalev on the foothills of the Urals this Saturday night proceeds to lift the lid on the deadly perils of growing up in east London.
He talks of gangs and guns, stabbings and stick-ups. Of fleeing for his life. Of turning his life around to become one of the leading prodigies in British boxing.
Of how on one night he had nothing more on him than a tub of Vaseline with which to buy off pistol-brandishing thugs.
‘ That’s what I call a hostile environment,’ says Yarde.
We are exchanging cross-generational comparisons about the mean streets of our parallel upbringings, mine half a century before his.
Yarde is telling his tales as he wipes off the sweat of a turbocharged sparring session before setting off on two flights across the 2,500 miles which he hopes will end in him becoming a world champion in only his 19th professional fight.
He speaks for both of us when he says: ‘I saw a lot of bad things done by people I know to other people I know.’
Then he focuses on the difference in eras: ‘It’s very multi-cultural in east London now. I’ve been chased by a group of young black boys. I’ve been chased by a group of young Somalian boys.’
He winks at me and adds: ‘I’ve also been chased by a group of elderly white guys.’
What about the Vaseline hold-up which has become part of the local folklore? He winks again and says: ‘Those guns were pulled by elderly black guys.’
The details: ‘ We’d gone with a friend to sell his moped but of course they just took the moped. And his phone. And his money. How very stupid of us. I looked at another of my friends who was meant to know one of the guys and I asked myself, had he set us up? That turned it into a different situation.
‘I was letting my ego get involved. That was stupid, also. I wasn’t listening to the guy with the gun. I wasn’t following instructions. All he could get from my pockets was that tub of Vaseline.
‘I remember him saying, “Oh, here’s a sweet boy”, as he threw the Vaseline on the ground. Of course I picked it up as soon as they went. My lips were even drier because I was scared. Right there in Hackney. That was one of the most dangerous moments of my life.’
Another was the consequence of an ill-advised trip across the river. East Londoners and south Londoners are historically bad neighbours and Yarde knows: ‘I shouldn’t have gone there. Again guns were pulled but this time the car just came out of nowhere.
‘ But you never know when something’s going to happen. Sometimes it’s for no reason. They don’t know you from Adam but they think, “Oh, he looks like one of them lot so let’s move on him. I found myself in certain situations