Moses Itauma used to take on world champions after school. Now 20, he had plenty of experience of sparring the top heavyweights in the world by the time his pro career took off two years ago. Twelve wins and 10 knockouts later, he is regarded by many as the best young heavyweight prospect since Mike Tyson.
There have been plenty of well-built and athletic heavyweight hopefuls, but it’s incredibly rare for them to be quite this young or to possess the real key element – solid fundamental skills. Itauma’s knockout power is impressive, certainly. But his footwork, technique and ringcraft are what elevate him to a true prodigy.
Those inside boxing knew what was coming. Thomas Carty, a southpaw heavyweight from Phibsborough, met Itauma when the Briton was just 16.
“He was like a child at the time, like a young teenager – he was still in school,” he says. “I knew that the kid was definitely a special talent.”
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Carty sums up Itauma as “ good fundamentals and a genetic freak”.
Southpaw heavyweights are hard to come by, so the pair have often been drafted into camps for sparring. Carty explains that they’ve got to know each other well.
“I’d actually be friendly enough with Moses, he’s a good kid. We spent a lot of time together in Morecambe sparring [Tyson] Fury.”
The reason he prefaces that statement with “actually” is because of who the “kid” is fighting this weekend. Not only is Dillian Whyte by far the best opponent Itauma has faced so far, he is also Carty’s manager, training partner and good friend. It says a lot about Itauma’s quiet and likable character that the Irish fighter still has so many good things to say about him on fight week.
In contrast, Whyte’s personality is bold and brash, but at 37, the best days of his career are behind him. The Jamaican-born heavyweight cemented a place in the division’s top 10 in the mid-2010s, and has only drifted out of those spots in the last few years.
“The Bodysnatcher” rose to prominence through his rivalry with Anthony Joshua, and he remained popular despite the knockout loss. In the years that followed, while the squeaky-clean Joshua was appearing on the Graham Norton Show, Whyte presented boxing fans with a chaotic and entertaining alternative British heavyweight to support. That chaos peaked during the build-up to his fight with Derek Chisora, where Whyte goaded his opponent into throwing a table at him during a press conference.
It was that personality that originally made Carty a fan.
“I liked his whole demeanour, he didn’t really care much for, you know, being politically correct. Him and Joshua were like polar opposites.” The fact that Whyte’s fights generally lived up to the hype didn’t hurt his popularity either.
Whyte’s Sunday punch is his lead left hook, which has knocked down or flattened top heavyweights such as Chisora, Joseph Parker and Alexander Povetkin. He’s particularly effective when under threat, making a specialty of the “catch and counter”, shelling up, taking a punch on the guard, and then uncorking one of his own back on the onrushing opponent. He does have an Achilles’ heel though – his three losses (to Joshua, Fury and Povetkin) have all come by uppercut knockout.
There are a lot of variables at play in this fight. Whyte has been out of the limelight and hasn’t looked at his best in his three fights since losing to Fury in 2022. But, then he showed up this week in the type of shape that made him a contender in the first place and a quick look at his CV reminds you that he has only lost to the cream of the crop.
And Itauma is still a mystery at this level. His last two wins came against fighters with very good records (21-1 and 22-1) and he dealt with them in less than six minutes, combined. But Carty reckons there’s a massive skill gap between those fighters and Whyte.
“They’re on different planets,” he says. “If you look deep enough into some people’s records, you’ll find that they’re inflated with a load of nobodies.”
Despite his limited CV, Itauma is a personal favourite of the Saudi Arabian billionaire Turki Alalshikh, who has bankrolled most of the big heavyweight fights in this decade so far. After Usyk’s destruction of Britain’s Daniel Dubois, Alalshikh wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “I want to see Usyk against Itauma. This is the fight.”
That is what is expected of Itauma. That’s a lot of pressure for a guy who already has to deal with Whyte this weekend. For now, the focus has to be on this weekend only. If he looks past Whyte, then he’ll be staring up at the roof lights at the end of Saturday night.
