All sports live with the curse and dubious delight of the Monday morning quarterback. Big-time boxing has its own, more forensic and unforgiving version. Let’s call it the Sunday morning Colombo.
No sooner has the final bell sounded, pugilism enthusiasts from all over are putting forward all the evidence and every clue we missed in the fashion of a prime-time television detective. I knew that guy wasn’t all that, it was so obvious if you know anything about boxing. That sort of thing.
Moses Itauma was already getting plenty of that treatment as he underwent precautionary examinations at the hospital in the early hours of Sunday morning. That was never part of the plan for the prodigiously talented 21-year-old. The fight week promotion ahead of Itauma’s clash with Filip Hrgovic for the vacant IBF heavyweight title was daubed with the tagline “WITNESS GREATNESS”.
It’s a safe assumption that this wasn’t promising the paying public one of the most implausibly great chins they’d ever seen and Croatia’s first-ever world heavyweight champion. But that’s what they got. Itauma battered Hrgovic for the vast majority of the eight completed rounds but unravelled, a suddenly forlorn and startlingly uncoordinated mess, in the ninth. He wilted as Hrgovic marched through the fire one last time and the title was gone.
Itauma is not the second-youngest heavyweight champion of all time behind Mike Tyson and Britain’s second-youngest in any weight category behind Naseem Hamed. Hrgovic’s victory was one of the most authentically shocking turnarounds inside a British ring in recent memory, but plenty of folks will tell you it was in the post, stamped and dated by Itauma himself.
Why did Moses Itauma lose to Filip Hrgovic?
As Hrgovic put it in the boxing parlance afterwards, Itauma gassed out. The youngster dazzled his foe during a one-sided first round. In the second, a beautiful short right forced Hrgovic to touch down. The new champion was the first to admit that it was one-way traffic. The Sporting News felt Hrgovic shaded rounds three and seven. He didn’t. The 34-year-old said afterwards that he felt he lost every round.
Itauma hit Hrgovic so hard and so often from an array of angles that it was a fair assumption that eventually he would fall, as the Briton’s previous opponents had. However, as early as round three, Itauma was uncharacteristically loading up and missing wildly. Adrenaline can do funny things to a boxer, and the home fighter still seemed to be fuelled by Friday’s weigh-in fracas, determined to punish Hrgovic.
“He’s just a kid. He could have boxed [at range] for the last few rounds. Use his legs, box. He was winning all the rounds. But he went toe-to-toe with me in round [nine]. It was a stupid move from him. Very stupid. But it’s inexperience. He’s an amazing fighter, but he’s still young.”
Itauma: “I lost it a little bit, but we’re here now. I had a little itch and had to scratch it.” pic.twitter.com/bAjygf1QyU
— Dom Farrell (@DomFarrell1986) August 28, 2026
Promoter Frank Warren cited a leg injury for Itauma afterwards, which would tally with him losing his shape entirely during the final moments. But it really was a remarkable unravelling. The closest parallel that comes to mind is David Haye’s 2004 loss to Carl Thompson, when British boxing’s bright young thing of that era threw the kitchen sink at a hardened veteran and fell to pieces.
But even in that instance, Thompson landed some shuddering blows of his own that had a clear impact upon Haye and stopped him in five. Itauma dominated for much longer against Hrgovic and, although the Croatian landed some meaty right hooks towards the end, there was no single shot that robbed Itauma of his equilibrium or called his chin into question. This was pure exhaustion to a virtually paralysing degree.
A smarter, more experienced fighter would have decided early on, maybe after four rounds, that Hrgovic was going nowhere, but a comprehensive points win was there for the taking. Which also begs questions of Itauma’s training team.
Should Moses Itauma change trainer?
Ben Davison has overseen Itauma’s career for the duration and, until this weekend, it looked flawless. But the nature of the loss give fighter and coach uncomfortable questions to answer.
An Itauma interview from before the fight, where he claimed never to have sparred 12 rounds, went viral in the aftermath. It quickly became the smoking gun. But the problem for the boxing sleuth is that there is always a claim and a counter-claim. Former WBO super-middleweight champion told talkSPORT that the trainer told him Itauma had been stopping sparring partners towards the end of 12-round sessions in preparation for Hrgovic.
Either way, Itauma’s conditioning clearly fell well short of what was required, whether that was as a result of inadequate preparation or an adrenaline dump and a lack of composure on fight night. A trainer prepares their charge physically and mentally and, as Davison unfurled the white towel in round nine, he would have known his team missed the mark.
Itauma’s loss, following Fabio Wardley’s punishing defeat to Daniel Dubois and Anthony Joshua’s brutal reverse against the same fighter, amounts to an unhelpful recent body of work for the Essex-based trainer.
Yet, any criticism of Davison should be weighed in terms of how gleeful it is. He is a coach of elite boxers who never fought professionally and the film study of esteemed analyst Lee Wylie is a key part of how he prepares his stable. Team Davison are happy to talk about their modern approach and rightly proud of its results. Leigh Wood’s unlikely ascent to become a two-time featherweight champion, Wardley’s improbable path from white-collar to world champion and Davison bringing Tyson Fury back from ruin to his heroic first performance against Deontay Wilder are all part of the story here too.
Defenders of the old-school will relish Davison’s public defrocking and lament how Itauma should be in safer hands. The experienced Abel Sanchez being in Hrgovic’s corner will serve as further confirmation bias. Davison, Itauma and his handlers have a decision to make, but it should be made away coldly and away from the noise.
Can Moses Itauma still be world champion?
Hrgovic was fairly unequivocal on this, going so far as to declare his vanquished rival to be “the best guy in the division, the most talented guy in the division.” The champion added: “I believe he’ll be world champion for sure. But he needs more time.”
The evidence of the first half of the fight backs this up. Hrgovic conceded he had not expected to lose so many rounds, but had no answer to Itauma’s speed and variety. Warren, Davison and others in the Moses business have been lambasted for moving their young tyro too soon, but the same voices would probably have complained about Itauma not being “let off the leash” had he not been stepped up after demolishing Jermaine Franklin last time out.
Itauma was more than good enough to win in Saturday night. Inexperience and sub-optimal conditioning were his downfall. Those are things both fairly easily fixed with time and application. But he now faces a battle with a boxer’s biggest enemy: self-doubt.
From the stories of him lighting up experienced pros as a schoolboy in sparring to his rapid progress through the paid ranks, this must have all felt like a tremendously good time over the past few years. Itauma never even tasted defeat as an amateur. How he navigates his first moment of sporting adversity coming on such an exposed public stage might make him or break him.
“He will have to want to do it… which I’m sure he will,” was Warren’s not-exactly-emphatic assessment. Itauma’s talent is beyond doubt. How much he wants it all after such a humbling experience is a fair and open question.
Time is obviously on his side. He could still quite conceivably become one of the youngest heavyweight champions in history, especially considering Warren handles most of the elite big men in world boxing. If Itauma comes through these weeks of psychological torment and continues on his way, another chance will present itself. At that stage, he will know more and ideally face a boxer with a chin made of skin and bone, as opposed to whatever Hrgovic is carved from.
It’s bad news for boxing in the UK that Saturday’s fight was not one that stopped the nation, but that actually works in Itauma’s favour. In a different era, in a less fractured broadcasting climate and a sporting ecosystem not so dominated by soccer, this would have been a very public humiliation. He can go about his business in a way that Anthony Joshua, for example, could not after similar setbacks.
Joshua and his eternal rival Tyson Fury are hardly flavour of the month right now, as the interminable wait for their scandalously delayed super fight goes on. But the richly gifted Itauma falling short demands that the accomplishments of his predecessors are not taken for granted. Joshua also punched himself out against Wladimir Klitschko at Wembley in 2017, was floored badly, got up, regrouped smartly, and unified the heavyweight championship in front of 95,000 people. Not bad for a hype job, eh?
It’s fashionable to dismiss today’s heavyweights because they are not collectively on a par with the golden eras of the 1970s and 1990s. But heavyweight championship fights are fraught with danger and hard-won in any era. If Itauma was under any illusions about that, they have been shattered. Just like the Sunday morning Colombos, he has all the information he needs. What he does with that knowledge and experience matters more from this point on than his sublime talent.
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