Key points:
- At 15, Moses Itauma sparred world cruiserweight champion Lawrence Okolie while still wearing his school uniform
- Itauma briefly fell out of love with boxing after his eighth professional fight before linking up with trainer Ben Davison
- He converted from an amateur orthodox stance to a professional southpaw under Davison’s guidance
- Born in Slovakia to a Nigerian father, Itauma didn’t take up boxing seriously until finding football boring at his local Kent gym
A spar nobody in the gym could quite believe
Before Moses Itauma ever turned professional, before the unbeaten record or the Mike Tyson comparisons, there was a 15-year-old walking into a gym in his school uniform to spar with a reigning world champion.
Anthony Fowler was there and remembers it clearly. “I walk in the gym and there’s this kid there in a school uniform. This kid just went forward the whole spar throwing bombs. I think he half-winded Lawrence with the left hand to the body. He was relentless for three rounds on him, throwing non-stop punches. No one could believe it in the gym.”
The world champion on the other end of those punches was Lawrence Okolie, and years later he still struggles to describe it as anything other than strange. “It was a good spar. I was quite shocked at how good he was. I think if he was like a 25-year-old, it would be like, ‘Oh, wow, he’s good.’ But because he was 15, 16, it’s bizarre, seeing someone at that age doing what he was able to do.”
A career that started almost by accident
Itauma wasn’t destined for boxing from birth the way some fighters’ origin stories suggest. Born in Kežmarok, Slovakia, to a Nigerian father and Slovak mother, he moved to England as a child and drifted into the sport almost sideways. “Where I lived there were many amateur boxers and I always saw myself in boxing,” he’s explained. He switched to St Mary’s ABC in Chatham, Kent, largely because he’d grown bored of football, not because a boxing dynasty was waiting for him.
The amateur run that followed was still spotless: schools titles, junior titles, a European youth championship, and a Heavyweight Youth World Championship, all before he turned professional in January 2023 at 18.
The moment he almost walked away
What doesn’t fit the tidy prodigy narrative is that Itauma quietly fell out of love with the sport that was supposed to define him. By his eighth professional fight, still unbeaten, he admits he’d started to hate boxing.
The turnaround came in spring 2024, when he linked up with trainer Ben Davison at his Harlow gym, the same coach who’s worked corners for Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua. Davison didn’t just reignite his motivation, he rebuilt his fundamentals from the ground up, converting Itauma from an orthodox amateur into the southpaw fighter stepping into the O2 Arena on August 29.
Why the Hrgovic fight feels different from everything before it
Itauma has talked about dreaming of becoming heavyweight champion since he was 16 or 17, but he’s been careful not to treat Filip Hrgovic like just another name on the way there. “He’s only had one defeat and he only lost because of the cut. Yeah, he’s solid. I’m in for a long night but I’ll be all right,” he said.
It’s a rare moment of caution from a fighter who’s finished nine of his last eleven opponents inside two rounds, and it says something that the schoolboy who once buckled a world champion in a spontaneous spar now sounds genuinely respectful of what’s waiting for him on fight night.