Moses Itauma and Filip Hrgovic meet on Saturday night at London’s O2 Arena and hall-of-fame promoter Frank Warren knows that the future of the heavyweight division could rest on the shoulders of the young Englishman.
But Warren respects Hrgovic, too, the Croatian veteran who fights Itauma for the vacant IBF heavyweight title and is also on Queensberry’s books.
“He’s signed with us,” Warren said of Hrgovic. “He’s a lovely guy. He’s good fun. You’ve got to look at what he’s done. Again, he’s one of those guys where he couldn’t make the living. He’s living in his own country. He’s had to get on the road, so he’s a road warrior. That’s what he is. I take my hat off to him. He’s very, very confident about this fight.
“He’s got tremendous experience, [a 2016] Olympian. He’s gone through all the different levels. One loss on his record, which was a cracking fight with Daniel Dubois, and he was giving Daniel a lot of problems early on in the fight. I thought Daniel may have stopped him or knocked him over, but he certainly stopped him with a cut eye. He’s come back since, and he’s got some wins again on the road [defeating Joe Joyce, David Adeleye and Dave Allen].
“We made this fight for Moses originally. It wasn’t for the title. It was looking for someone to extend him more. We want to get more experience. He’s only had 31, 30 rounds of boxing, and in the last, I don’t know how many months – it’s certainly well over a year – he’s only had six rounds of boxing. It’s been difficult to get him the experience that he needs, but we made the fight.”
Oleksandr Usyk gave up his three sanctioning body titles in June, opening the door for the Itauma-Hrgovic clash to be upgraded to a fight for the vacant IBF title.
“We’ve managed to get him into a position where he becomes the second youngest [heavyweight beltholder], if he wins the world title, the youngest British heavyweight to win a world title if he wins the fight, and the fighter would have probably the least experience to win a world title in a fight if he comes through,” Warren said.
“But we believe in him, and I just feel Hrgovic is going to go one of two ways. I think he’s either going to do it quick or it’s going to be a long fight. Hrgovic starts fast, and Moses does as well. He [Itauma]’s got a very good boxing brain. And when I first met him, that’s what impressed me about him. When we signed him when he was 16, he’d done brilliantly in the Europeans, winning the youth heavyweight title and also the youth world title. Everyone he fought in the Europeans, he knocked out in the first round. In the Worlds, the ones he didn’t knock out, he put them on their backsides. And he’s a very confident person, and he’s a very mature 21-year-old. He’s probably one of the most mature young fighters I’ve ever met. He’s got a good head on his shoulders, and he believes in himself. And it’s not like an arrogance about him. He’s just got this self-belief in his ability. And the one thing he’s got is tremendous ability.
Itauma, however, has spoken this week of his annoyance at Hrgovic’s jibes, that he has been gifted his standing in the sport. And while Warren has seen it all before, he doesn’t anticipate the mind games having an effect on the prodigy.
“I see [Hrgovic] do it,” said Warren. “When we did the head-to-head with Daniel Dubois, he’d done the same thing. He sat there with him, he said, ‘You’ve got no heart, you’re a quitter.’ And he really was giving it to him, looking in his eye and telling him.
“And that’s what he’ll do. He’s 34 years of age. He’s not got a lot of miles on the clock.
“He’s only had 20 fights. And he’s going to use every trick in the book. He’s a smart guy. And you try and unsettle him.
“Boxing’s not just about being a good boxer, being fit. It’s about having a strength of character and mind. And I believe Moses has got that. And in a fight, he’s going to try and out-man him. That’s what clever guys do, that’s what clever boxers do. It’s the art of boxing. And he will apply every bit of pressure, look for any little chink in that armor of Moses that he can expose and exploit. And he’ll do that.”
Itauma has spoken in the build-up to this fight about how he is not attracted to the fame that comes with success. He is a quiet man who wants to go about his business and get on with living his life – ideally away from the cameras.
“I’ve had quite a few conversations about that with him,” said Warren. “Only the other day he said he was in a cab and his face was on the bus, advertising on the bus.
“So he’s on the buses in every city in the country, all over the place…
“I said, and he didn’t even get what I meant, because it’s probably giving my age away here, I said to him, you’ve been more on the buses than Blake and Reg Varney [from 1970’s UK sitcom On the Buses]. I said, ‘Everybody knows who you are now. You’ve got to live with it. That’s part of what you’re in.’
“You think about it, in most eras, the most famous sportsman on the planet has been the heavyweight champion of the world. Think of all the names going back to Jack Johnson all the way through, you know, Louis, Marciano, Ali. They have all been that. And he’s a young man. So if he’s going to continue in this business, and I think even if he fights to the age of Hrgovic, that’s another 13 years, he better get used to it. It’s part of the deal. He’s pretty much of an introvert, but he has come out of himself a bit. And I said to him, ‘You just got to compartmentalise it in your head and keep it there. Don’t let it overtake you and start believing in all this bullshit. That’s what it is. It comes with the territory and get on with it.
“And he was actually good. So he is getting better at it.”
And Warren stated that he has been impressed with Itauma throughout their time together. The fighter is now 14-0 (12 KOs) and will be one of the least experienced heavyweight titlists of all time. Leon Spinks, who won the world championship in 1978 after just seven fights and 31 career rounds, arguably tops the list, however.
“What I like with Moses is he is sensible and you can have a real intelligent conversation with him, a real intelligent conversation with him,” Warren went on. “And he gets it and he understands it. And, you know, time will tell. But I think he’s very capable. I think if he comes through this fight and does what I hope and I believe he can do, I think he will become an icon, not just in boxing or sport. I just think he will be I think he will have a lot to give outside the sports people.”
Itauma this week told members of the UK press that there were times, in his younger years, when he had become despondent after a bad spar and he took some time away from boxing. Hrgovic scoffed at that. But time will tell, said Warren, about how much Itauma wants it.
“I mean, look, again, he’s a young man,” Warren said. “We all go through things when we’re young, don’t we? You get out of bed one morning, think ‘sod this’. I mean, listen, I’ve been involved with Tyson [Fury] for God knows how long. I don’t know what side of the bed he’s going to get out of. He’s going to retire. He’s coming back…
“I think with Moses, what basically was it? Has he got resolve? Has he got strength and character? Well, if you want to be a world champion, you’ve got to have those and you got to have them in buckets. Buckets full of it. I think he’s got it. And you know what? The man in there who’s bringing all these points up, he’s the one who he’s fighting and we’re going to find out because he thinks he’s got the key to all this. He really does believe it. So that’s great as long as everybody remembers it before and afterwards.
“One thing about Filip and the team around him, they have studied the life out of Moses. They’ve looked at everything. I know the sparring they’ve had, all what they’re doing, but once that bell goes, putting it into practice and delivering that can be another thing. And the one thing I know what Moses does have, he has speed. He has a great boxing brain.
“His footwork is fantastic. His handspeed is unbelievable.”
Hrgovic is well-ranked by the four major sanctioning bodies and he, like Itauma, is promoted by Queensberry.
But the week is about Itauma.
“It’s a joy to promote him,” Warren said. “And for us as Queensberry, of course I want to see him win the fight, even though Filip is a Queensberry fighter too. But I’ve invested in him… I don’t mean money-wise, but I’ve invested my time and my belief in him from day one. And I want to see him come through this. I really want to see it happen for him. I think he’d be great for the sport. And we will see on Saturday if that’s going to be the case.”
The fight is on DAZN, the streaming service that now boasts deals with almost all of the established promoters in the UK and the USA.
But, for many, DAZN has not been able to reach outside the hardcore.
Warren, who faced detractors when he jumped from terrestrial TV in the UK to Sky Sports, has heard similar murmurs before.
Then, on Sky, be built Ricky Hatton into arguably the UK’s most famous boxer.
“Every channel I’ve worked with, we’ve delivered to every single TV station we’ve worked with or TV companies, broadcaster,” he added.
“We have developed the crossover fighters, and I believe he’ll be the one.”
Itauma and Warren, since they first joined forces, have already come a long way.
“He was a young kid, a teenager, and very quiet, didn’t say a lot, didn’t say a lot at all. He came along, we sat down and we talked about what we’d like to do. He said, ‘I want to be the youngest heavyweight [champion] of all time. I want to fight for the world title and beat the record.’ He had all those things he wanted. He may have done that, but he had a couple of injuries, so that pushed everything back. That was never my way forward for him because, as I said to him, ‘this is not a 100-yard dash, this is a marathon.’ It’s all about making the right matches at the right time. I’m hoping we’ve done that in this case.
“He was a very nice, humble, young man. As I’ve got to know him, I think he’s turned into a really decent young man. He’s very respectful. I’ve only heard him swear once, and that was at me.”
