The question that hangs over any young prospect during the early stages of their career is always the same: “How will they react when someone hits them on the chin?”<\/p>\n
Moses Itauma<\/a>, the 20-year-old prodigy, is no exception. And given nobody has managed to land anything on him during his 12 professional fights so far, the jury is still out. \u201cOff the top of my head,\u201d he says. \u201cYou got this kid called Luka Pratljacic. He’s a Croatian guy. I think he’s still an amateur, he might have had one fight as a pro.<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly getting hit by him I felt like I was getting hit by a baseball bat, it wasn’t even landing clean and I was like \u2018someone check his gloves\u2019 but he was wearing my gloves! His punches were very hard.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously Lawrence Okolie’s got a bit of a snap in his punch um, Aloys Junior is a big powerful puncher and Tyson’s got enough power to do some damage.<\/p>\n \u201cBut honestly, any heavyweight has the ability to knock out any other heavyweight so I wouldn’t say one hits harder than the other. I think if a chin needs 5lbs of pressure to get knocked out it doesn’t matter whether it’s 5.5lbs or whether it’s 10lbs, all we need is 5lbs pounds of pressure.<\/p>\n \u201cI think any heavyweight’s got that ability so for a long time I haven’t been in the ring where I think my opponent can’t punch or doesn\u2019t pose a threat.\u201d<\/p>\n But while the boxing public seem to be waiting for an opportunity to see exactly how Itauma will handle a crisis in the ring, he is not in any rush to prove his mettle.<\/p>\n \u201cBoxing is about hit and not get hit,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you’re constantly getting hit then that shows you what type of boxer you are. Obviously I’m happy to go my whole career and not get hit.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople just don’t realise what they mean by \u2018the chin isn’t tested\u2019. Any heavyweight has the ability to knock out any other heavyweight. I don’t think anybody’s shy from that. <\/p>\n \u201cLike, Joe Joyce was once known to have the best chin in boxing and then obviously Zhilei Zhang did what he did. The chins can be cracked. <\/p>\n \u201cI just can’t pay attention to those types of comments because I don’t think I’m invincible. But I train as if I can achieve invincibility. I don’t want to get hit. <\/p>\n \u201cI’ve sparred thousands and thousands and thousands of rounds and I have been hit. I know in 10oz gloves it might be a different story but that’s why in sparring you try to perfect for fight night. So on fight night I’m this polished boxer that hopefully comes out the ring untouched.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The question that hangs over any young prospect during the early stages of their career is always the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,2989,2983,2831,2988,2981,2984,2985,2986,2987,2982,1920,2993,2992,1913,2976,2977,2990,2978,2975,2994,2772,85,2991,2974,2980,2979],"class_list":["post-72553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-community","tag-boxing-fights","tag-boxing-history","tag-boxing-interviews","tag-boxing-magazine","tag-boxing-photos","tag-boxing-rankings","tag-boxing-results","tag-boxing-schedule","tag-boxing-videos","tag-boxing-news","tag-disqualification","tag-draw","tag-fight","tag-fighter","tag-fighter-news","tag-knockout","tag-latest-boxing-matches","tag-ring","tag-ring-magazine","tag-split-decision","tag-sports","tag-technical-knockout","tag-the-ring","tag-top-fighters","tag-upcoming-boxing-matches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72553","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=72553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
But Itauma has been doing the rounds behind closed doors since his mid teens and famously turned up to spar Lawrence Okolie<\/a> wearing his school uniform. Former cruiserweight world champion Okolie still maintains it was his toughest spar to date.
It has been suggested that former world title challenger Dillian Whyte<\/a> will provide the boxing world with the answer on Saturday night when the pair meet at ANB Arena<\/a> in the climax of the Esports World Cup fight week live on DAZN PPV<\/a>.
Itauma has never sparred Whyte but has shared the ring with Daniel Dubois<\/a>, Joe Joyce<\/a>, Tyson Fury<\/a>, Okolie and many more. So who, so far, has hit Itauma the hardest? The answer might surprise you.<\/p>\n