{"id":363389,"date":"2025-12-23T08:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T08:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/363389\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T08:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T08:13:10","slug":"moses-itauma-on-the-business-of-boxing-and-his-meteoric-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/363389\/","title":{"rendered":"Moses Itauma on the business of boxing and his meteoric rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

MANCHESTER, England \u2014 Moses Itauma<\/a> has enjoyed a meteoric rise since he turned professional less than three years ago but the past few months have taught the 20-year-old plenty about the patience required of an elite heavyweight.
Itauma turned professional as a prodigiously talented teenager and quickly set his sights on beating Mike Tyson<\/a>\u2019s record and becoming the youngest heavyweight champion in history. <\/p>\n

The quest wasn\u2019t a publicity stunt. If the right opportunity had presented itself, Itauma\u2019s team wouldn\u2019t have hesitated to snatch it.<\/p>\n

Itauma (13-0, 11 KOs) will turn 21 on December 28 and, almost inevitably, things have slowed down.<\/p>\n

The heavyweight division has been in hibernation whilst unified champion, Oleksandr Usyk<\/a>, decides how he wants to bring his outstanding career to an end. <\/p>\n

Potential opponents have also woken up to just how dangerous a fight with Itauma can be.<\/p>\n

Fighters who may have once sneered at the prospect of fighting an unproven teenager suddenly want well compensating for their time or are content to wait for the world title picture to clear up before accepting the assignment.<\/p>\n

Itauma has boxed twice this year – scoring quick knockouts of Mike Balogun<\/a> and Dillian Whyte<\/a> – and is preparing to box fringe contender, Jermaine Franklin<\/a>, at Manchester\u2019s Co-op Live Arena on January 24. The fight will be broadcast by DAZN<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Itauma is still at the learning stage of his career and 2025 has taught him plenty about how the sport works outside the ropes. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn these last couple of months, I actually wouldn’t really say I\u2019ve learned how much boxing is a business but more how many business-minded people are in the sport if that makes sense,\u201d he told The Ring<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, at the end of the day, to a core, like, boxing is, I guess, still a sport. It’s just the fact that there’s so many businessmen trying to make money out of it. I probably would say, yeah, there’s a lot more contracts, a lot more talk, a lot more smoke than when I first started professional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Usyk, Anthony Joshua<\/a> and Tyson Fury<\/a> remain the most high profile heavyweights on the planet but Itauma is widely regarded as the heir apparent. <\/p>\n

He isn\u2019t surprised at just how rapidly he has developed into such a significant factor in the sport\u2019s glamour division.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, like I said, when I first started professional I wanted to be a world champion by the 20,\u201d he said matter-of-factly. \u201cI\u2019m not surprised at all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MANCHESTER, England \u2014 Moses Itauma has enjoyed a meteoric rise since he turned professional less than three years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,1151,1144,1150,1149,1142,711,1145,1146,1147,1148,1143,49,48,1156,1155,1138,1136,1137,1153,1139,1135,1157,1152,82,1154,1134,1141,1140],"class_list":{"0":"post-363389","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-boxing-community","10":"tag-boxing-fights","11":"tag-boxing-history","12":"tag-boxing-interviews","13":"tag-boxing-magazine","14":"tag-boxing-news","15":"tag-boxing-photos","16":"tag-boxing-rankings","17":"tag-boxing-results","18":"tag-boxing-schedule","19":"tag-boxing-videos","20":"tag-ca","21":"tag-canada","22":"tag-disqualification","23":"tag-draw","24":"tag-fight","25":"tag-fighter","26":"tag-fighter-news","27":"tag-knockout","28":"tag-latest-boxing-matches","29":"tag-ring","30":"tag-ring-magazine","31":"tag-split-decision","32":"tag-sports","33":"tag-technical-knockout","34":"tag-the-ring","35":"tag-top-fighters","36":"tag-upcoming-boxing-matches"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}