There were 50 seconds left in the eighth when Anthony Yarde, who had lost all seven rounds to that point, truly hurt Sergey Kovalev for the first time.

Then, once the Englishman sensed he had the WBO champion going, it was time to turn the screw. Left hook to the body, right hook to the body, right uppercut. All landed.

A huge left hook, then a right, "The Krusher" seemed incapable of defending himself against the onslaught from the underdog. Referee Luis Pabon was having a close look as Kovalev staggered back to the ropes and took another big shot as the round entered its final 30 seconds.

Yarde swung so hard at one point he nearly threw himself over the top rope but the finish would simply not come as the bell sounded. Those 60 seconds were all Kovalev needed to regroup, and, by the 11th, he had come back from the brink of being stopped to winning this fight via stoppage.

Now six years on, Yarde stirs his coffee and pauses for a second when he is asked about how he reflects on that trip to Chelyabinsk, Russia, to face one of the most destructive light-heavyweights of his generation. He smiles.

“See, if I had won the world title that night, it might have been the end of me,” Yarde tells The Ring. “I was so young then, it would not have been the right time for me. I was mature in some ways but not in others. I didn’t know what it would be like to get that much attention.

“The money would have come so quick. I would have beaten Kovalev in Russia, and I would have become the man overnight. I would have got all that money, all that attention, but I really think all it would have done is cause me problems. Major problems, in my area, in my life.

“Whereas now, I’m more mature, I’m wiser. I know what I’m doing. Everything is about timing.”

Those are the four words he and trainer Tunde Ajayi have always lived by since he turned professional, after only 12 amateur bouts, back in 2015. Now, as he prepares to face David Benavidez for the Mexican Monster’s WBC light-heavyweight title Saturday in "The Ring IV" main event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he believes the stars have aligned.

It is his third attempt at the ultimate prize, following that defeat to Kovalev and a similarly painful one against Artur Beterbiev four years later in London, but as he arrived in Riyadh this week he felt like something was different.

“What let me down in both of those fights is experience,” he says. “I’ve known that, learned from that and taken away every lesson I could from those situations. So, surprisingly, I actually take a lot of confidence from those fights.

“I feel like if I fought Beterbiev again now, I’d beat him. The timing was right for him that time, and he even said to me afterwards, ‘Right now it’s me, but this boy is the future’. That’s the same thing Kovalev said, too. I didn’t quite understand what they meant at the time, but now I do.

“Because they’ve been in the ring with me, they know I don’t just hit hard, but I do little things that are effective. Now add that experience in, and I know this is my time.”

It would be difficult to find a tougher route to a world title than Kovalev, Beterbiev and now the undefeated Ring No.2 Benavidez (30-0, 24 KOs). Yarde nods.

“People say to me, 'you’re crazy man',” he says. “You’d fight anybody. I always say ‘why not?’ If you know where I’ve come from and how I’ve been in my life already, you’d know why I want to take that next step to do things that might make you great.

“I’ve taken losses before and I know what that feels like. Now I don’t care. They weren’t detrimental losses either, my career is still flowing. I learned a lot from those experiences, and it’s not really ever going to get much harder than that. That’s my mentality now. I can look in the mirror and say that I’m proud of myself.”

Yarde, who grew up in Stratford and Forest Gate in east London, could have quite easily found himself on the wrong side of the tracks with many of his peers. He saw friends stabbed, shot and sent to jail but always kept himself out of harm’s way before he started to take boxing seriously late in his teens.

“Let’s say I’ve just beaten Benavidez, right,” he says. “And I’m the WBC light-heavyweight champion of the world. There will still be comparisons to someone like Andre Ward. Or maybe Beterbiev or Floyd Mayweather. People will say, ‘Yeah he’s good, but he’s not as good as this guy’. There will always be a comparison, but for me, I’m now the greatest.

“None of those guys only had 12 amateur fights. None of those guys had a coach who'd never had a world champion before, and they’d done it together for more than 10 years. If you look at all the particulars, I will have no argument as to why my career has been great as well. I would never say, ‘Oh, I’m better than Floyd’ or anything like that because it’s silly.

“But, from the cards I was dealt, I made an exceptional account of myself.”

The crowning moment could come on Saturday night at ANB Arena should he become the first man to beat Benavidez and the new WBC light heavyweight champion. He admits he wasn’t ready to wear the crown in 2019, but is he now?

“Yes, of course,” he says. “This is the hyperdrive bit. I feel like the difference now, depending on your beliefs, is that now the timing is right for me.”