Artur Beterbiev has revealed he hasn’t watched a single one of Anthony Yarde‘s fights.

The WBC and IBF unified champion challenges Joe Smith Jr for the WBO light heavyweight world title on Saturday night in New York – with Yarde expected to face the winner later this year.

But Beterbiev doesn’t know that much about Yarde as he admits that he’s not really a big fan of the sport.

“I’m not a fan of boxing,” Beterbiev told The Ring Magazine.

The unified light heavyweight champion continued: “I don’t follow the different boxers even before I became a world champion, I didn’t follow boxers and being honest I never watched Yarde.

“I haven’t watched his fights and I don’t know him well, but when we have contact or a fight with Yarde we will watch him and check everything.”

Beterbiev, who currently resides in his adopted hometown of Montreal, is boxing‘s only champion with a 100 per cent knockout ratio.

He enters the fight with an incredible record of 17-0, all by way of knockout.

Beterbiev has beaten the likes of Marcus Browne, Adam Deines, Oleksandr Gvozdyk and Callum Johnson.

But Smith Jr, who only has three losses on his record, will be hoping to cause an upset.

And he admits he is excited by the challenge that lies ahead.

“Every fight for me is exciting,” Beterbiev added.

“Every fight in this position that I have is a challenge and I have to be prepared 100 per cent for every fight.

“Joe Smith is good. He has good experience in the professionals and he’s had good fights against good opponents but we will see on January 19.”

It comes after Yarde’s promoter Frank Warren confirmed that he is next in line to fight the winner of Beterbiev’s unified light heavyweight showdown with Smith Jr.

Warren told iFL TV: “We’ve been talking to Top Rank and that’s where we’d like to get to.

“I spoke to Bob Arum about it. We want to do that fight. We’ve booked the date, we have talked about it.

” We’ve booked the date the 22nd of October we want to get that fight on.

“The winner has to fight Anthony Yarde. That has to happen. The WBO has ordered it.

“We made it very clear from the beginning as far as Anthony is concerned. He got himself, by winning that fight, into the number one mandatory position. He’s in that position.

“He’s flying out to the Joe Smith-Beterbiev fight. He’ll be there for that. And the winner will fight him in October.”

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