Funnily enough, when you need just 117 seconds to navigate what is meant to be the toughest test of your career, there’s not much to analyse. Yet, even if there had been, Moses Itauma might have shrugged at the idea of breaking down his first-round evisceration of Demsey McKean. “That’s my coach’s job,” Itauma says. “Do you know what’s mad? I actually watch my interviews more.”
Our conversation is not being filmed, as the British heavyweight speaks to The Independent from across a table, downstairs in Mayfair’s softly-lit Park Chinois restaurant. So, there can be no post-chat analysis from the unbeaten 20-year-old – unless he is reading this article right now. “I watch my fights for entertainment purposes; I watch my interviews and think of what I can do better,” Itauma reveals.
“I’m like: ‘Ah, I shouldn’t have said that. Ah, I should be smiling.’ When I first turned professional, I had this thing where I wanted to be unapproachable.” I’ll admit, I entered our conversation expecting some prickliness.
He explains: “I didn’t want to be a guy where you’d be like, ‘I wanna go talk to him,’ but there’s a difference between having that look and looking like a complete... Sorry for my French, but I was thinking: ‘I look like a proper pr***, let me just be myself.’
“I don’t want to be on camera and be a different person. I struggle with interviews sometimes because I’m not used to talking. When someone says, ‘You’re this good, you’re that good,’ I’m not the sort of person to speak in conversations like that. Matter of fact, I like being around one of my friends, Jordan, only because he loves to be the centre of attention. I love that, because I can just sit there, listen.”
All credit to Itauma if he can avoid being dragged into the conversation around his future. It seems to have swallowed up the British boxing community. Itauma opted against a Team GB run and turned pro with Frank Warren’s Queensberry in 2023, going 11-0 since. Nine knockouts, seven in round one. Some fans see Itauma – who is managed by Frank’s son Francis Warren – as a generational talent, and many believed he could have broken Mike Tyson’s record as the youngest-ever world heavyweight champion. Itauma believed, too.
Yet Itauma would need a world title around his waist by 19 May to break that record, and current pacing suggests it will remain intact; champions Oleksandr Usyk and Daniel Dubois are out of Itauma’s reach. Thus, the 20-year-old is open to facing Filip Hrgovic next, while former world champion Charles Martin (crushed by Anthony Joshua in 2016) is open to fighting Itauma. Some have questioned the whereabouts of Martin’s marbles, although they couldn’t question the whereabouts of his cojones.
Itauma is not only a frightening prospect because of his effortless power and a speed that belies his size, or even his sometimes “unapproachable” demeanour. He is frightening because of the sparring stories that surround him, like the one about a 15-year-old Itauma entering a gym in school uniform, forcing an experienced Joe Joyce to keep his wits about him in the ring. Itauma also says he held his own against Dubois and Joshua.
Those stories have enhanced the aura around Britain’s next great heavyweight hope. Yet he was born to a Nigerian father and Slovakian mother in the latter’s homeland; do we overlook the pride he might have in that heritage? He ponders the question for some time. “That’s weird, because... Would you say, every time you were gonna interview someone, you thought, ‘I need to do my country proud’? Of course my heritage is what takes me into the ring, and obviously without that heritage, I wouldn’t be alive. But it’s not the first thing on my mind.”
What is the first thing on his mind?
“Everyone will tell you it’s not good to have an ego,” Itauma says, “but it is, because that’s why great fights happen. The reason people don’t want to back down is because they don’t want to be humiliated. You see people unconscious, they don’t know where they’re at, and they’re still trying to get up. It’s because of pride: the same reason Joshua kept trying to get up against Dubois. If people didn’t have egos, then the first time they ever felt a little punch, they’d go down and never come back up.”
McKean’s ego must have taken a hit in December, when Itauma – six days before his 20th birthday – dropped the 34-year-old twice inside two minutes for an outrageous win. Most inside boxing believed Itauma would see off the Australian (and that’s saying something), but the efficiency and brutality with which Itauma dispatched the veteran was still alarming, even to Itauma. Two destructive, southpaw left hands did the damage, with the second knockdown looking especially sickening, as McKean folded into himself like a camping chair.
“I thought it would have gone a couple rounds,” Itauma admits. “At the same time, I’m not surprised it went like that, only because the tactics were on point. Ben [Davison, Itauma’s coach] said to me: ‘You ain’t even gotta spar the last two weeks.’”
Itauma greeted the result with the slightest smile. “Even though you don’t see that I’m happy, deep inside I am,” he says. He may need to watch back a few more interviews to work on showing it. But watching back his fights? “That’s not my job,” he insists.
