{"id":566764,"date":"2026-03-27T01:21:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T01:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/566764\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T01:21:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T01:21:11","slug":"who-wins-moses-itauma-vs-jermaine-franklin-prediction-and-breakdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/566764\/","title":{"rendered":"Who wins Moses Itauma vs Jermaine Franklin? Prediction and breakdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

It took a bit longer than expected<\/a>, but Moses Itauma and Jermaine Franklin will finally share the ring this Saturday as the chief attraction of Queensberry\u2019s latest Manchester show.<\/p>\n

Bad Left Hook will have LIVE coverage of the card starting at 1:00 pm ET.<\/p>\n

Itauma (13-0, 11 KO) has dispatched his last nine opponents in under two rounds apiece, including a 1:59 demolition job of Dillian Whyte last October. Franklin (24-2, 15 KO) dropped back-to-back bouts to Whyte and Anthony Joshua, but enters the ring on the heels of an upset decision over two-time Olympic bronze medalist Ivan Dychko.<\/p>\n

Can Franklin snatch his second consecutive \u201c0,\u201d or will boxing\u2019s best heavyweight prospect claim another quick finish?<\/p>\n

Who will win Itauma vs Franklin?<\/p>\n

With all due respect to Franklin, I just don\u2019t see how he wins unless Itauma has some massive Achilles\u2019 heel that flares up at the worst possible moment.<\/p>\n

The key issue here is speed. Itauma is blindingly quick for his size and adept at keeping things at his preferred mid- to long-range. The only times he\u2019s looked even mildly uncomfortable came when opponents bullied their way into the pocket and forced him to clinch, but as we saw against Mike Balogun, forcing Itauma into a phone booth is significantly easier said than done.<\/p>\n

While Franklin is hypothetically durable enough to withstand some of Itauma\u2019s broadsides, he moves like he left his parking brake on. Watching him plod around against Devin Vargas, giving up huge chunks of real estate to a man in his early 40s, it\u2019s hard to fathom how he deals with the in-and-out movement of Itauma. Franklin basically has to hope that Itauma wears himself out within the first few rounds, which is a lot to ask when Franklin lacks the footwork or spoiling skills to throw Itauma off his game.<\/p>\n

That just leaves the puncher\u2019s chance, which Franklin doesn\u2019t really have. Vargas had been finished seven times before and the best Franklin could manage was a stoppage between rounds, which marked just his second win inside the distance in the last eight years. Itauma\u2019s not going down unless he sprints face-first into a wound-up bomb, and even then I\u2019d give the young gun decent odds of getting back up.<\/p>\n

Too slow and too light a puncher to knock Itauma out of his comfort zone, it\u2019s really just a question of how long Franklin can hold out. He\u2019s got a chin on him, but I\u2019m feeling the early finish. Sadly, I\u2019m not currently at my rhetorical best, so just imagine a suitably florid description of Franklin\u2019s inevitable hiding.<\/p>\n

Prediction: Itauma by second-round TKO<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It took a bit longer than expected, but Moses Itauma and Jermaine Franklin will finally share the ring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,265656,85],"class_list":["post-566764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-predictions","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}