While Anthony Yarde is expecting things to be different when he has his rematch with Lyndon Arthur on Saturday night, Arthur would be happy if nothing changes. 

He won their first fight a year ago with little more than a left jab, having injured his right hand during his warm-up. But if that turns out to be enough this time, Arthur will be happy enough. 

“So what if they only think I have got one punch? It works and I hope it works again,” he said. “If I don’t throw a right hand in this fight and I still win, I don’t care. 

“I don’t care how boring I am, I don’t give a f---. Winning is what I want to do.  

“The right hand is fine, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was fine in the last fight too, what if I was just lying? I might use it this time, I might not. 

“I know he believes a crowd will make a big difference this time, but I enjoy a crowd, I play up to a crowd.” 

Arthur said he was as shocked as anyone by Yarde’s lack of action in their last meeting saying he was getting warning from Pat Barrett at the end of every round to expect Yarde to go for it. 

“The corner was telling me ‘next, round, next round’, but I was the only reason he was able to come on in the last round,” Arthur said. “He caught me with a good body shot and I thought I had to throw and try and throw and I led with an uppercut for no reason, I never do that, and he caught me with a big right hand that knocked me off balance. 

“I don’t like watching the fight but Pat made me watch it the other day and after he caught me with the right hand, straight away my left hand was up to defend against the follow up and then I tied him up. If he was going to knock me out, I would have done it right then. It took a bit of wind out of me. Even though the fight wasn’t a strong pace, it was a thinking fight and that takes it out of you, especially if you are thinking you can get knocked out.” 

Arthur also knows that he can’t rely on anything that happened a year ago to help him this time. 

“I don’t like to watch any of my fights back,” he said. “They are done, they are in the past, I can’t dwell on them. One bad performance going forward and those fights don’t mean anything.  

“Boxing is a naked sport where people will take the piss out of you. If I go in there and get knocked out, I expect people on Twitter will chat sh!t about me until my next fight. You are as good as your last performance in boxing and that is it. Pat taught me that. 

“Saturday night is my next chapter. I know I can still get knocked out at any point.” 

With no crowd at their previous meeting, at Church House, Westminster, much of the crowd noise at the venue came from Arthur’s close friend, Sunny Edwards, who will be ringside again tomorrow before Arthur heads to Dubai next week where Edwards will be defending his IBF flyweight title against Jayson Mama. 

“He keeps telling me the next two fights are going to change our lives,” said Arthur, who has been promised a shot at the WBO light-heavyweight title if he wins. 

“You have to think about it. What are you in boxing for? You are in it to win a world title. But it is not on my mind enough to make me not think about this fight.  

“If I win a world title, then Sunny can’t keep chatting sh!t to me. Then we can have proper arguments.” 

Ron Lewis is a senior writer for BoxingScene. He was Boxing Correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001-2019 - covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights across the globe. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications worldwide since the 1980s.