Some numbers for you. Let’s start with 119 seconds: the time it took for Moses Itauma to knock out Dillian Whyte, a teak-tough veteran brawler who had been predicted to give the young heavyweight the stiffest test of his career to date.
One. Sip of beer I took between arriving at the pub and Whyte hitting the canvas in Riyadh. I should have ordered a half.
Two. Professional boxers who have taken Itauma past the second round, his third and fourth opponents. Eight of his 13 victims to date were dispatched in the first.
Four. The age at which Itauma moved from the Slovakian town of Kežmarok to join his family in the UK. Everyone knew him as Enriko then; he adopted his middle name of Moses at the start of his boxing career.
Nine. The age he first entered St Mary’s Amateur Boxing Club in Chatham.
Twenty. His age at the time of writing. He turns 21 on 28 December and may well fight for a world title before he hits 22.
Zero. The number of defeats he has suffered as an amateur boxer. Eleven of his 24 fights ended by knockout. He won gold in the European and World Youth Championships but declined to chase Olympic glory, turning professional in 2022 in order to financially support his family.
Practically everyone loses as an amateur, even those rare boxers who retire undefeated as a pro. Floyd Mayweather lost eight times, Joe Calzaghe lost ten. Oleksandr Usyk went 335-15. Obviously Itauma has a far smaller sample size but you could argue this lack of amateur pedigree makes his dizzying rise all the more remarkable. Besides, the legendary Rocky Marciano (50-0) only managed 12 amateur fights, losing four of them.
There is a chance – and we’re obviously getting ahead of ourselves here but how can you stay rational when considering a talent such as Moses Itauma, what’s the point of following sport if you don’t allow yourself to get a little giddy now and then – there is a chance that Itauma might become the first male boxer in history to never, ever lose a fight.
“He’s just a once-in-a-lifetime fighter,” Frank Warren tells me over Zoom. “He is something special as a person and certainly as an athlete and a boxer. He will cross over. He will cross over big time and the general public will get behind him.”
As Itauma’s promoter, Warren isn’t exactly going to underplay his fighter’s abilities – but nor is his verdict an isolated one. Many, many people have anointed Itauma as a special talent. He sparred world champions as a schoolboy. Fifteen years old, heading to the gym straight from class to unleash on fighters twice his age. Give them hell for six rounds, then back home to revise for your science test.
He lived in Chatham in those days. Now he operates out of Essex, close to the Harlow headquarters of his trainer Ben Davison. On an overcast September afternoon, myself and our photographer Dan travel there for an audience with the prince of British boxing – not that Itauma would ever claim such a moniker. He doesn’t do red carpets or Ferraris or fancy restaurants. When we arrive, he’s on the way back from Nando’s.
I look round the gym, aka the Ben Davison Performance Centre. (Along with Itauma, the 32-year-old Davison also trains Anthony Joshua.) There are two rings, a separate weights room, even a sauna. It’s a boxing hothouse, designed to grow fighters into champions. Davison told TalkSport that Itauma could become the number one pound-for-pound fighter in the world.
Itauma pokes his head round the doorway. “Bonjour,” he says, the legacy perhaps of a recent trip to Paris. Travelling is a favourite pastime. He likes to visit places where nobody recognises him. Those places are dwindling in number.
This isn’t an original observation but he could pass for a decade older than 20. Dude is massive, 6ft 4in, weighing 245.5lb against Whyte. He doesn’t speak so much as rumble, a voice of subterranean depth that moves with the slow deliberation of a tectonic plate. Already there’s a gravitas to him, the sense that here is someone capable of bending the world to his will.
It should be stressed that while Itauma is the subject of immense hype, his only contribution comes via his deeds – the words he leaves to other people. “I don’t even feel like I’m anybody,” he tells me later. “I’m still like a nobody.”
For the cover shoot, we have this idea of paying homage to ‘King of New York’, the iconic Notorious B.I.G. photo in which the rapper wears a plastic crown against a red backdrop. Itauma is a little dubious as “I don’t want to come across as egotistical” but he agrees to give it a go. “That’s not too bad,” he concedes on seeing the shots.
His manager Francis Warren, Frank’s son, is also present. I ask Francis whether they’ve found an opponent for Itauma’s next fight. Not yet, says Francis. His team are keen to get their man out before the end of the year; you want him facing a seasoned veteran, a recognisable name who’ll last longer than a round. In theory, someone like Dillian Whyte.
(Several weeks later, the next fight is finally revealed: against American Jermaine Franklin at the Co-Op Live Arena on 24 January.)
At our request, Itauma has brought two leather jackets, long-sleeved and short-sleeved, the products of a collaboration with British-Nigerian artist Slawn. He wore the short-sleeved jacket for his ring walk against Whyte. To be exact, his brother Karol brought the jackets, driving across Essex. “Just for you guys,” says Moses.
Karol also boxed, a promising light-heavyweight who fought as recently as March 2025. He found the sport when the family moved to the UK, Moses following his elder brother into the gym. When we speak, Karol refers to his career in the past tense. Now he works as a property developer. The brothers occasionally communicate in Slovak during the shoot.
There are three Itauma brothers – Karol, Simon, Moses – born to a Nigerian father and Slovakian mother. Their parents met in London and initially settled in Kežmarok, a small town in eastern Slovakia. After a few years, the Itaumas decided to relocate. “There weren’t that many people of colour or people of African heritage in Slovakia,” says Moses. “Everything was difficult, everything was awkward.”
As the shoot progresses, there are flashes of the teenager he was less than a year ago. He speaks dotingly of his young nephew. At one point he starts messing around with the photographer, playing the schoolyard game where you put your fingers into a ring and hold it beneath your waist. (The idea being you can hit anyone who looks down at it – fortunately for Dan, Moses doesn’t do the hitting part.)
In the boxing ring, his blood runs cold. Dan Garber, Itauma’s eighth opponent, spoke to Boxing News about their pre-fight staredown. “It was like there were nothing there. No emotion. It was like looking at a blank canvas. I remember coming back to my uncle after seeing him. I said ‘He’s not right in the head, this kid’.” Garber took the fight on late notice; Itauma stopped him within a round.
Photoshoot concluded, Itaumaslumps on a battered sofa in the corner of the gym. It’s been a long day, the morning ritual of training followed by an unfamiliar afternoon as a model. Now I want to hear his story. It’s a story destined to be retold countless times in the years ahead. In magazine profiles, documentaries, perhaps eventually on the big screen.
He started boxing at nine but initially preferred football. Was he a talented footballer? “No,” he chuckles. “That’s why I came back to boxing. Joking.” In typically understated fashion, he cites Karol’s success as an inspiration. “When he won his first national title, it was like, yeah, I’m not really doing much. So I went to the boxing gym with him.”
The ring held one great advantage over the football pitch: control. “Football is a team sport. I didn’t really like the outcome of the match to depend on other people, other people’s efforts. If I lose, it’s my fault that I lost.” Even so, “a lot of people like to blame their trainers after loss. But you employed your trainers so it’s your fault.” For now, the concept of losing remains purely hypothetical. When did he last come off worse in a physical confrontation? “I get beat up all the time in training camps,” says Itauma. “I just don’t on fight night.”
When did he realise he had a talent? “I guess when I sparked Lawrence Okolie and I held my own.” Ah yes: the Okolie spar has acquired an almost mythic quality since Itauma began blitzing all comers. In some versions he’s 16, others 15. Regardless, the salient facts are the same: this kid turns up to Shane McGuigan’s gym, changes out of school uniform and proceeds to give the then-world cruiserweight champion all he can handle and then some.
Former boxer Anthony Fowler was training that day. Earlier this year, he shared his memories with the BoxingScene website. “This kid just went forward the whole spar, throwing bombs. I think he half-winded Lawrence with the left hand to the body. He was relentless for three rounds on him, throwing non-stop punches. No one could believe it in the gym.”
Francis Warren already managed Karol Itauma. He convinced the old man to take a look at the younger brother. “This kid’s unbelievable,” said Francis. “You’ve got to see him.” Frank liked what he saw and began sponsoring Moses. “That was the start of the journey,” says Warren Senior.
I ask Frank to explain why our readers should be excited by Itauma. “Because he’s exciting! He’s very mature for his age. As an amateur, he won the European Junior Championships. He knocked everybody out in the first round. When he fought for the World Amateur Championships, the ones he didn’t knock out, he put ’em on the floor.” (This isn’t hyperbole: in a format that typically goes to decision, Itauma won all four of his European Youth Championship fights by first round stoppage and two out of four in the Worlds, including the final.)
Tanned and avuncular, Warren is talking to me from his “old geezer’s room”. He’s 73, a promoter for nearly 50 years. He speaks with a mixture of grandfatherly pride and the same excitement, almost disbelief that afflicts everyone when discussing Itauma. Of all the fighters Warren has witnessed, thousands, tens of thousands, “at his age and where he is at this moment, he’s by far the best. By far the best. Now we’ll see what happens going forward.”
Not every fight will be a first round KO. Eventually, says Warren, “there will be somebody who stands there with him. It happens. You look at any fighter’s record – Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, all of ’em. There’s always somebody who’s going to stay there with them.” When Itauma meets adversity, “we’re going to find out a little bit more about him and what plan B is. I think he has plan B and I think he’s got a plan C and a plan D. That’s how good I think he is.”
I asked Itauma whether he has yet felt troubled in the ring. He cites the American boxer Mike Balogun, his 12th opponent. “When I boxed Mike Balogon, he hit me on the glove and the glove hit me. I was like, ‘Oi! This man’s got a bit of pop in him!’ I felt it.” He floored Balogun in the first, stopped him in the second. Attack is the best form of defence and all that. As Itauma says in reference to facing Whyte: “That big stiff jab to the head? I’d rather not.”
Movement is among Itauma’s most highly lauded attributes; he’s the big ’un who navigates the ring like a little ’un. Ditto speed: not merely speed of hand but speed of thought. Cruiserweight Chris Billam-Smith watched a teenage Itauma spar. Earlier this year, he articulated his unique skillset to The Boxing Show podcast.
“It doesn’t seem hard for him. Things just happen. He’s not going, ‘Right, I’m going to wait for him to do this or I’m going to try and set him up.’ Like Usyk sets things up, he’ll set traps for people. These guys will do it but not know they’re doing it. He might see a jab and he’ll slip it and throw a right uppercut from that southpaw stance and then put a left hand on and it’s like, ‘Where did that come from?’ You can’t think that quick consciously. It’s all subconscious with him. He’s a phenomenal talent.”
This talent has created a paradox: Itauma can’t find an opponent but his name is on the lips of every major player in the division. Saudi powerbroker Turki Alalshikh wants him against Usyk next. Former world champion Joseph Parker claims he’d “love” to face Itauma. Eddie Hearn sounds less than convinced about a potential Joshua fight – “What do you gain out of it?” – but insists “We’d take it in a heartbeat” were a world title on the line.
Former sparring partner Lawrence Okolie now operates at heavyweight. Okolie would “100%” take the fight, admitting with commendable honesty that sooner rather than later would be preferable. “He has been gifted since he was young,” said Okolie in a recent interview, “but what you don’t want to do is get someone who is gifted and experienced. By the time that he is 25, he is going to be unbelievable.”
There’s a famous Muhammad Ali quote: “The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” Who knows how Moses Itauma will view the world at 50? Considering what the next few years must bring, who knows how he’ll view it at 25?
Intriguingly, he admits at one point, “To be honest, when I first turned professional, I didn’t necessarily like boxing. Everyone called me moody.” It sounds more a case of adolescent angst than the full Andre Agassi – “I hate tennis” reads the first sentence of the tennis legend’s autobiography – but a complex relationship with boxing isn’t merely understandable, it’s natural.
Something else Itauma says: “Three things that affect people’s personalities. Obviously A is their parents, B is their environment and C is the people that they interact with.” While he credits his parents for providing a loving home, the person he is today was moulded by the boxing gym and the people within it. He’s spent half his adult life in boxing. It is his world.
A question on his favourite fighters produces a verbal tour of modern boxing, Itauma namechecking the likes of Prince Naseem Hameed, James DeGale, Gennadiy Golovokin, Floyd Mayweather and Vasil Lomachenko. “Growing up, I loved all fighters. I just loved boxing. I loved the respect that you got. Obviously, the money side’s not bad. I liked everything that came with the sport. Not so much the politics or whatever, but you don’t know that as a kid. You just see fighters punching someone up and get paid millions of pounds to do it and having a blast. I’m like, that sounds like a fun life. Sign me up!”
When I ask his favourite aspect of boxing – the ring walk? The knockout? – there’s a rare hesitation. “I don’t really know,” he says. “I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but it’s like my job, isn’t it? How many people are excited to do the job that they’re doing? Especially if they’ve been doing it since they were nine years old. I’m in a blessed and privileged position to be able to box and perform in front of thousands of people and get paid millions to do it. I guess I don’t mind that aspect.”
His rise is often compared to Mike Tyson’s but he’s an infinitely more laidback character. He doesn’t crave the limelight like Tyson Fury, nor does he appear to possess the commercial hunger of Anthony Joshua. (Although at Itauma’s current age, Fury had just turned professional while Joshua was an amateur with two years’ experience in the sport. Both were years away from headlining their first show, let alone world title fights.)
For now, Itauma sounds ambivalent about his rapidly growing celebrity. He’s not a natural extrovert. “I don’t really have much of a social battery, especially when I go out in public.” While he’s keen to stress his appreciation for the fans, there’s no doubt the constant interactions can be draining. People film him in the car. They stop him in the street, insisting he must know their cousin.
He’s brilliantly deadpan describing an encounter in Nottingham. “I was hands deep into my chicken wings and a guy asked me, ‘Can I have a photo?’ I just looked at him, I looked at my chicken wings, I looked at him, I looked back at the chicken wings. I was trying to get him to get the hint.” Dining out sounds particularly trying. “The other day I was on a date and literally five people came up to me and stuck a camera in my face while I was eating. They don’t even ask. I had a burger in my hand, man!”
“It comes with the territory, unfortunately,” says Warren. He describes Itauma as “a pretty down-to-earth guy”, noting success will only increase his popularity. “More and more people will see him and they’ll buy into him, and the more they do, the more they’re going to want a piece of him. When they see him out, they’re going to want his autograph, get photos done. It comes with the territory.”
As well as world champion and great of the sport, Warren hopes Itauma will inspire a generation. “I want to see him become an ambassador for Britain because I think he’d be a great ambassador for Britain. I think he’s a great communicator. Boxing is just the start of the journey for him. He will go on to bigger and better things.”
What does Itauma want from his career? “With boxing, I’ve never wanted to achieve one thing and then call it a day. I never wanted to make X amount of money… I just liked having that lifestyle and having that routine. So when I just get sick of the routine and the lifestyle, maybe I would hang it up. But as of right now, I’m alright.”
He’s trying to find hobbies outside of boxing, admitting with typical candour, “I don’t really enjoy a lot.” Travelling he likes. “I want to travel across the world.” Except Italy, apparently – “Sardinia left a bad taste in my mouth.” Why? “Just didn’t like it. It was so expensive for no reason.”
He was discussing Sardinia with an American property developer he met in Paris. The American said, “Sardinia is one of the places where you go and you park your boat.” Itauma shakes his head. “I was like, brother, I’m not on that level. What makes you think I’ve got a boat to park up?”
Monday evening at The Ned, a fortnight after my trip to Harlow. Approximately 100 people have gathered in the Tapestry Room to watch a public Q&A between sports commentator Adam Smith, Francis Warren and Moses Itauma. The audience is mostly male, mostly suited. Two TV screens show highlights from Itauma’s short career soundtracked to the opening bars of ‘Still D.R.E.’ The highlights don’t last very long.
“I’m not really used to this,” says Itauma with a grin. He stresses the fact he’s a boxer, not a talker. Laughter ripples through the room. Tonight marks his second-ever speaking engagement. You wouldn’t know it. Smith asks if he felt he was talented from a young age? “I don’t know,” says Itauma, smiling again. He quotes Kobe Bryant on greatness, noting the evolving expectations that accompany every new fight.
Naturally, people who give up their Monday night to watch you speak are likely to be fans but Moses is charming his audience. He’s confident, self-deprecating, and his deadpan delivery works like a charm. A story of sparring Joe Joyce after a science exam earns multiple laughs. Ditto the statement: “Training for ten weeks to punch someone in the face and then doing it again, it isn’t as exciting as you lot think.”
Francis Warren stresses his fighter’s maturity. “It’s baffling that this guy is 20… He’s wise beyond his years.” Smith asks Itauma his dream opponent for his next fight; Oleksandr Usyk is the reply. Warren stresses the need for a future opponent to give Itauma rounds. Very true, says Smith, but if you see the knockout, you’ll go for it, right? “It would be rude not to,” says Itauma. Laughter is followed by applause.
Do any of his heavyweight predecessors offer a career blueprint? Itauma notes how every new fighter is compared to past ones. “Does it make me a bad person to want to have my own career?” More applause.
Questions are passed over to the audience. Often this results in an awkward silence followed by one or two tentative volunteers. Tonight a dozen hands are immediately raised. Itauma fields questions on Jake Paul – “I think he’s good for the sport” – his desire to face Usyk, family influence. He’s fully relaxed now, joking about the difficulty in fighting Joshua given their shared trainer. “I don’t think Ben Davison will give me advice in one corner, run across the ring and give Joshua advice.” Someone asks about future trilogy opponents: “For a trilogy it needs to be 1-1, and I don’t really intend to lose.”
Tributes conclude the evening. Warren says Itauma will be a generational great and a cultural icon of Britain. Smith asks for a round of applause and gets a standing ovation. Everyone goes forward for selfies.
Two young men, City types, share my lift back down to the lobby. “What a guy,” says one, checking his phone for the photo he took with the prince of British boxing. His friend grins. “Yeah. What a guy.”
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Moses Itauma will return to the ring on 24 January
