Kal Yafai named on Anthony Joshua undercard as Brit looks to defend WBA World Super-Flyweight title

Kal Yafai celebrates after defeating Suguru Muranaka to win the WBA Super-Flyweight World Championship
Harry Trump/Getty Images
Richard Parry6 September 2017

British boxer Kal Yafai has been named on the undercard for Anthony Joshua’s IBF title defence against Kubrat Pulev.

The 28-year-old from Edgbaston will look to defend his WBA World Super-Flyweight title against unbeaten mandatory challenger Sho Ishida.

The fight will take place at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, on Saturday October 28, in front of an anticipated crowd of 90,000.

“It should be a great fight,” said Yafai. “We’re both undefeated and it looks an interesting one but it’s a fight I’m 100 per cent fully expecting to win and win in style.”

“We started camp about four weeks ago but I’ve been ticking over before that. We’ve been building up slowly but now we’re stepping up the intensity.

“I’ve found some good videos of him and I’ve watched a couple of his fights already but over the next eight weeks, I’ll be studying them in more detail with my team.

Ishida, unbeaten in 24 fights, stands four inches taller than Yafai. While Yafai admits it is an advantage, he says it will not be the decisive factor.

In Pictures | Anthony Joshua's professional fights

1/26

“He looks pretty tall,” he continued. “I think that’s his biggest attribute going for him. He’s busy with his jab and he seems comfortable on the back foot. We’ll see on October 28 if he does anything else but if he plans on using just his height and jab it won’t be enough to beat someone like me.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in