Anthony Yarde says he has been inspired by seeing how Michael Jordan overcame the death of his father in dealing with his own tragedy after both his father and grandmother died from COVID-19.

Yarde, the former WBO light-heavyweight title challenger, returns to the ring on Saturday night against Dec Spelman at York Hall, east London, his first fight since his double family tragedy during the early stages of the pandemic lockdown.

But watching The Last Dance, the documentary miniseries about Jordan, the basketball legend, struck a chord with him, as he saw how Jordan got returned to action following the murder of his father.

“Watching that really helped me,” Yarde said. “I saw how close he was to his dad, his dad was everything to him, they did everything together.

“He dealt with that is such a professional manner and continued to progress. He didn’t go crazy, he wasn’t affected mentally. I have to look at that as inspiration. He had a character that was unbreakable.”

Yarde admits his relationship with his own father was not close, after his parents split up when he was young. But they did speak and his father flew to Chelyabinsk to support Yarde when he challenged Sergey Kovalev for the WBO light-heavyweight title last year. 

“We communicated with each other, but we didn’t spend time together, we didn’t do all these things,” Yarde said. “That could have possibly happened in the future but no it’s too late for all that. But I just have to keep it as it was. The memories I have of my Dad are when I was younger and what other people say of him and that is that he was a good man.”

Yarde suffered the first defeat of his career against Kovalev but came close to stopping the Russian in the eighth round before being stopped in the eleventh. He believes the experience was a good one for him, giving a fighter of the level he needs to achieve to become world champion.

“Some people when a decision didn’t do their way, they came back and made statements,” he said. “It depends what ball game you play. I look at things in a positive way. I have had time to sit down and think about things. I am working on things I never worked on before and go forward from there.

“How I trained before got to me where I am now, so I have just added little things. I started running more, I do more cardio exercises, I changed up my diet. Just little changes I feel could help me.”

Victory on Saturday should set Yarde up for a fight with Lyndon Arthur and keep him on track for another world title shot, but Yarde is not about to be deflected by that.

“I’m just focused on Dec Spelman right now, any fight after that just doesn’t matter to me now,” he said. “I have got a job to do. I am laser focused. I’m hunting now, I am not going to divert now.”

He says he is intrigued by the idea of boxing behind closed doors, though.

“I can only go by what I have seen on TV,” he said. “It is very quiet, very echoey. You can hear my punches when there is a crowd, so I am interested to see how they sound with no crowd.”

Ron Lewis is a senior writer for Boxing Scene. 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.