WHY YOU’D BE STUPID TO WRITE OFF MOSES ITAUMA
It’s almost becoming a toxic British tradition to kick one of our own when they’re down and, on Saturday night, that tradition somewhat continued.
A huge favourite, Moses Itauma came up just short in his first world title fight against Filip Hrgovic.
At the age of just 21, he was attempting to become the second-youngest world heavyweight champion in boxing history.
As soon as the fight was waved off, social media became an absolute cesspit.
Phrases such as “hype job” were being dished about fairly quickly and, before you knew it, X was awash with ‘boxing experts’ giving their two pence on how he lost the fight and why he isn’t what many people were building him up to be.
It happened with Joshua when he was upset by Ruiz, it happened with Fury when he suffered his first defeat to Usyk, it happened to Ben Whittaker when he managed a draw in his first fight with Liam Cameron, and now it was Itauma’s turn to take the brunt of the trolls.
The scary thing about it, though, which is often the case when it comes to faceless accounts or ones with past or present boxers as their profile pictures, is just how far from reality what they were saying actually was.
Itauma is a 21-year-old young man. He’s competing at the highest level of the sport not by fluke, but because he’s earned the right to be there.
It’s not often the bookies get it so wrong, but the fact he was as short as 1/6 with some bookmakers shows just how highly knowledgeable people rated, and still do rate, this young man.
To put into perspective just how much of an achievement even competing in a heavyweight world title fight at the age of 21 is, Anthony Joshua had just suffered defeat in the Amateur World Championships at his age, while Tyson Fury had just fought John McDermott in their rematch for the English heavyweight title.
Two of the country’s greatest-ever heavyweights were miles behind him at this stage of their lives in terms of levels.
And it wasn’t even like Itauma was punched from pillar to post from the first bell.
If anything, it was the opposite.
He quite literally won pretty much every minute of the fight up until the moment the referee waved it off, throwing nearly double the number of punches Hrgovic threw and landing nearly double the number of power punches that Hrgovic landed.
Two of the three judges gave Itauma every round, and rightly so.
You could make a fair argument that if he had performed like he did in those first eight rounds against any other heavyweight on the planet, he’d have come out the victor — and more than likely with another highlight-reel KO.
The bad thing for Itauma was the fact that he was coming up against a man with arguably the best chin in boxing and one of the best chins in heavyweight boxing history to the point where he could have probably taken a cricket bat in there on Saturday night and channelled his inner Ben Stokes and still not have been able to put a dent in tough Croat.
Experience cost him the fight, nothing else, and if there’s one thing you cannot buy in boxing, it’s experience.
He’s had just 41 fights as an amateur and professional combined, compared to Hrgovic, who’s had nearly double that and boxed nearly five times the number of rounds he has.
There were questions regarding how good his chin was going into the fight as he’d never been ‘chin checked’ in his career but he answered those questions early on when taking a HUGE right hand from Hrgovic which he walked straight through unhurt. Chin check complete.
A scary fact.
An even scarier fact is that this lad is only 21. TWENTY-ONE.
Heavyweights don’t even reach their peak until their early 30s in most cases, so if he is this good now, imagine how good he is going to be in 10 years, with another decade of experience under his belt and 10 years competing at the highest level — a level he proved on Saturday night that he belongs at.
People, especially in this poisonous generation of social media where everyone has a platform, are often too quick to criticise and point out the negatives.
In this case, the positives outweigh the negatives by a substantial amount when it comes to Moses Itauma and, instead of criticising, people should start embracing this young man.
Despite the defeat on Saturday night, this Moses Itauma WILL go on to become one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time, and Moses Itauma WILL go on to become one of the greatest boxers this country has ever helped produce.
So enjoy the journey and stop jumping at the first opportunity to downplay the incredible talent that is Enriko Moses Itauma.