Anthony Yarde will fight unified light-heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev in 2023 if he can beat Bulgarian Stefani Koykov on Saturday in Telford.
Yarde, 31, faces unheralded Koykov, who has an impressive knockout ratio, and knows he cannot afford a slip-up.
“I’ve got somebody in front of me that looks confident [and] hungry so I don’t take no-one lightly,” he said.
Koykov is 14-1 in his career with 12 knockouts, and although Yarde is expected to make short work of his opponent, he has not fought since December 2021 when he knocked out domestic rival Lyndon Arthur.
Koykov, 30, has fought his entire professional career in Germany and Yarde said he knows little of his opponent.
“This guy, there’s no footage of him online,” he said. “This could be someone else I’m fighting. That’s my mentality.
“It could be anybody. Do I care? No, because I’ve got Beterbiev next.”
Beterbiev beat American Joe Smith Jr in June to add the WBO title to his collection and is expected to be fit again in early 2023.
Yarde fought for a world title in 2019, but was stopped late by the then WBO champion Sergey Kovalev.
At the top of the card on Saturday evening is Telford’s Liam Davies, who challenges for the vacant European super-bantamweight title on home turf.
He takes on Romanian Ionut Baluta, who called Davies “a child” in a fiery media conference on Thursday.
The card initially featured European welterweight champion David Avanesyan, but the Russian is now set to fight undefeated WBO champion Terence Crawford in Nebraska on 10 December.
