Moses Itauma brushed off the trash talk with a shrug and a line that cut through the noise.
“Talk is cheap.”
On Saturday night at the O2 Arena, there will be nothing cheap about what is at stake. The vacant IBF heavyweight title, recently relinquished by Oleksandr Usyk, sits between a 21-year-old prodigy with 14 straight wins (12 by knockout) and a hardened Croatian contender who believes he’s about to teach a lesson.
If Itauma wins, he becomes the second-youngest heavyweight world champion in history. He’s heard that statistic all week. He is already tired of it.
“I am not trying to become the second youngest heavyweight champion of the world,” he said. “I am trying to beat Filip Hrgovic.”
That is the fight in a single sentence. Not history. Not hype. One man in front of him: Filip Hrgovic, 34 years old, 20-1 with 15 knockouts, an Olympic bronze medallist and the most dangerous opponent of Itauma’s brief professional life.
Hrgovic leans into the needle
Hrgovic has chosen his role and is playing it with relish. The veteran has dismissed Itauma as a “kid” throughout the build-up, and on Thursday he doubled down.
“I think he is a kid, he is not mature enough and I think I am the man,” Hrgovic said. “I am a much better age, much more experience and yeah, that is it. No mind games.”
Then came the line he knew would travel.
“God willing you know I will beat him, I’ll smash the kid on Saturday and send him back to high school.”
There was no elaborate psychological warfare, no carefully crafted barbs. Just blunt force opinions from a man who believes experience, power and years in the trenches will break the unbeaten southpaw in front of him.
“I am just telling you facts. I am not playing any games,” Hrgovic insisted. “I just tell you what I think in the moment. Like I said, I am not so smart to play these mind games.”
The message was simple: this is a man’s division, and he intends to prove it.
Itauma stays ice-cold
If Hrgovic expected a reaction, he didn’t get one. Itauma met the talk with the same calm that has followed him through the heavyweight ranks.
“Na, man. At the end of the day talk is cheap,” he replied. “He has just got schoolboy banter and that’s it. You’ve got to keep rolling.”
No shouting match. No back-and-forth. Just a young fighter who looks and sounds like he has already decided where his energy is going to be spent: not at a press conference table, but under the lights.
“This fight is what I wanted. I asked Queensberry for so long,” Itauma said. “I think it is a style match-up I reckon I can thrive on, the pressure I can thrive on and it is just waiting to fight.”
He knows the narrative that surrounds him. The unbeaten record. The knockouts. The whispers that this might be Britain’s next great heavyweight. The chance to grab a world title before most fighters have even fully grown into the division.
He refuses to lean on any of it.
“Obviously the world title is an achievement and an accolade. And that is a plus one, but my sole focus is Hrgovic,” he said. “If I ain’t going to beat Hrgovic, it doesn’t matter about the world title and it doesn’t matter about the noise or nothing. My job is to be victorious on fight night. I am ready to rock and roll.”
Praise from a prince, focus of a contender
Even the flattery has gone up a level. Prince Naseem Hamed, never one for understatement, has already anointed Itauma as a potential all-timer, declaring him “a million times better” than Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury and tipping him to become the best of all time.
For a 21-year-old, that kind of endorsement can be intoxicating. Itauma is trying to treat it like background music.
“Obviously it’s good but when I hear things like that, I kind of have to put it to the back of my mind,” he said. “I have such a long way to go in the sport of boxing, but of course I appreciate it from an all-time great like Prince Naseem Hamed.”
The compliments are nice. The belt is nicer. The man he has to beat to get it is all that really matters.
Same script. Different story?
Strip away the talk and the numbers, and this is what remains: a 34-year-old contender who believes youth is overrated and a 21-year-old rising star who believes timing, not age, will decide everything.
Hrgovic is convinced he will bully the younger man, walk him down, and prove there is a gulf between prospect and proven operator.
Itauma is just as sure of how it ends.
“The perfect performance? It would be go a couple of rounds and finish the job,” he said. “Same script. Different story.”
On Saturday night at the O2, we find out whose version gets written into the heavyweight history books.
