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Anthony Yarde’s Laughing Stock trainer hits out at Carl Frampton and Matt Macklin


Tunde Ajayi has gotten his fair share of attention and caused plenty of controversy in recent weeks and this looks set to continue.

The trainer of English light heavyweight prospect Anthony Yarde has come out with some outlandish statements which have become a real talking point within boxing.

The Frank Warren-promoted Yarde has risen to the top of the WBO rankings and a fight with fearsome Russian Sergey Kovalev has been proposed.

Enter Tunde – who, among other things, has claimed that Yarde is the ‘A-side’, that the fight should take place at Arsenal’s 60,000-capacity Emirates Arena, and that his fighter is more technically skilled than Olympic gold medallist and future Hall of Famer Andre Ward.

It is assumed that Ajayi is adopting the ‘all publicity is good publicity’ mantra rather than these being his actual beliefs.

The attention-seeking trainer has certainly come in for plenty of flak while simultaneously generating a lot of interest in his relatively untested and unproven fighter.

Unusually, plenty of this criticism has come from within the sport, and Belfast’s former two-weight champion Carl Frampton labelled the talk “embarrassing” while two-time European middleweight champion and world title challenger Matthew Macklin expressed his sympathy for the London trainer.

The coach, who has no major achievements in boxing, hit back yesterday.

Referencing his rather unique style of ‘padwork’ – where Ajayi essentially hits Yarde’s gloves with the pads rather than vice versa – he claims that his fighter has provided more excitement than either Frampton or Macklin did throughout their careers.

44-year-old Ajayi, a former 5-0 welterweight who claims to be Yarde’s main sparring partner, made the assertion on Twitter and has been ridiculed for it.

Yarde’s career-best win is over former super middleweight title challenger Nikola Sjeloka while Frampton’s first clash with Leo Santa Cruz was nominated for Fight of the Year and Macklin’s brawl with Jamie Moore has already gone down as a modern classic.

Predictably, the self-proclaimed ‘Master Genius’ Ajayi has come in for plenty of abuse from boxers past and present for his ridiculous claims.

Macklin couldn’t help but laugh.

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Joe O'Neill

Reporting on Irish boxing the past five years. Work has appeared on irish-boxing.com, Boxing News, the42.ie, and local and national media. Provide live ringside updates, occasional interviews, and special features on the future of Irish boxing. email: joneill6@tcd.ie

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