Moses Itauma’s Five-Man Hitlist
By Declan Taylor
HEAVYWEIGHT prodigy Moses Itauma has sent his team a five-man hitlist of opponents for his next fight.
After stopping Mariusz Wach in the second round at the o2 on Saturday night, the Slovakia-born Kent resident is expected to return to the ring in September before an outing on the December 21 card in Saudi Arabia topped by Oleksandr Usyk’s rematch with Tyson Fury.
But, now 10-0 with eight quick, Itauma is becoming increasingly hard to match with few heavyweights willing to attempt to slow his rapid progress.
Itauma is still hoping to break Mike Tyson’s record as the youngest world heavyweight champion but he would need to do so before the end of May 2025 so a step-up in calibre is now being planned.
And Itauma himself has compiled a list of names he thinks would fit the bill for his September outing.
“It’s down to my team; my manager, my promoter and my trainer to see what we come up with,” Itauma told the George Groves Boxing Club podcast.
“But I did send them a list of names actually, I’ll call out the list that I said to my team. I said: Tom Schwarz, Tony Yoka, Demsey McKean, Guido Vianello, Simon Kean. They are all like big, high names.”
However, Itauma also revealed his preference would be to take on a fellow Brit having raced to 10-0 against foreign opposition only.
“I want a British domestic dust-up,” he added.
“I’ve called out so many names, we’ve offered the fight to so many people. The main one was Solomon Dacres and I was even terrorising his manager at the o2. I said ‘why aren’t you letting me fight him?’ But he said ‘mate, we are not going to take the fight against you, you’re a lose-lose fight’. I said ‘fair enough’.
“Frazer Clarke is of course realistic, he’s not really on the radar at the moment but it’s definitely realistic. It’s a good fight, I like Frazer, he’s a nice fella.
“The next fight will be September time, but it won’t be on the Joshua-Dubois undercard on September 21, unfortunately not.
“I’ve definitely got two more fights left this year, definitely Fury-Usyk two but we want to get one more before that.”
On his aspirations to become history’s youngest world champion, Itauma admitted he was initially naive about the treacherous path to the top.
He said: “See when I first turned professional I was unaware of the politics behind it. I just thought two men get in the ring and fight, climb the rankings and then you become a world champion.
“It’s not that simple, there’s so much stuff outside the ring you can’t control. If I’d have known that I probably wouldn’t have said it!”
