Buatsi and Hutchinson meet for the vacant WBC title
Joshua Buatsi fights Willy Hutchinson on November 7 at the AO Arena in Manchester, with the vacant WBC light heavyweight world title on the line. It is a rematch: Buatsi dropped Hutchinson twice on the way to a decision win in their first meeting in 2024.
Anthony Yarde will be watching closely, and he has a clear preference. He is backing Buatsi, because a Buatsi win keeps alive the domestic fight that has been discussed for years without ever being signed.
Why the Yarde Buatsi fight still matters most
Yarde has been linked with Buatsi since Buatsi turned professional after winning bronze at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The two have never shared a ring as professionals, and Yarde says the delay has not come from his side.
"I have shown time and time again I'm willing to fight anybody and as soon as it got to the point where the public, the pundits and everybody was calling for this fight, I said let's make it happen," Yarde said. "It just makes sense."
He added that he would rather have taken the Buatsi fight in England, with a world title attached, than travel to Saudi Arabia for a different name. He listed David Benavidez and Artur Beterbiev among the alternatives he would have passed over.
"It is a different crowd, different environment and fight Benavidez or even Beterbiev, I would have preferred the Buatsi fight over all of them," he said. "I am not saying because it's an easier fight or anything like that, it is because in my opinion it was a bigger fight."
Yarde's read on Buatsi and Hutchinson
Yarde's support for Buatsi is strictly professional. Asked about the two men as personalities, he was blunt about the opponent he wants.
"Buatsi is as boring as watching paint dry outside of the ring," he said.
Hutchinson rates higher with Yarde on entertainment value, a factor Yarde says he weighs heavily when a fight is being sold. "In terms of entertainment outside of the ring, which I think is very important, Hutchinson makes sense as well."
That leaves Yarde in an unusual position: wanting one man to win for the fight it unlocks, while preferring the other as a spectacle. He acknowledged the tension himself, saying the public demand pushes him towards Buatsi regardless of how the build-up would look.
What the Manchester result changes
A Buatsi win hands Yarde a world title fight against a domestic rival, which is why Yarde framed the November 7 bout as the more valuable of the options in front of him. A Hutchinson win removes that route and leaves Yarde looking elsewhere for a title shot.
Nothing is signed, and Yarde's interest is not a guarantee that the bout gets made. The pattern of the past several years is that the fight is discussed, agreed in principle in public, and then stalls. What is different this time is the belt: if Buatsi wins, the WBC title would sit on the line in a fight that has never previously had one attached.
For now the sequence is fixed. Buatsi must beat Hutchinson, and Yarde must wait on a result he has already said he wants to go a particular way.
The original report on Anthony Yarde's comments was published by skysports.com.