IFL TV<\/a>, Itauma said he would expect nothing less from a rival fighter, though said he does not believe the words to be true.<\/p>\n\u201cListen, everybody\u2019s got to say something to the media. He ain\u2019t gonna come on and say [anything else]. Let me ask you a question: do you think Usyk would be able to knock Dillian Whyte out in a minute?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s saying I\u2019m a young guy, he\u2019ll break me. I\u2019ve got the utmost respect for Usyk [but] I know it\u2019s not the truth. He\u2019s not going to go on to the media and portray himself in a negative way, so I don\u2019t take offence. If I get the opportunity, I get the opportunity. If I don\u2019t, I don\u2019t \u2026 I know his team don\u2019t think what he said.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the 21-year-old may not get the opportunity to force a changing of the guard in the heavyweight ranks against Usyk, he could still target generational big hitters in Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, who both did the same when they were on the rise against a veteran Wladimir Klitschko.<\/p>\n
However, the pair of former champions could well conclude that the risk outweighs the reward, and Itauma may be destined to carve his own path with other rivals on the rise. Next up, he faces the durable Jermaine Franklin on March 28 in Manchester.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oleksandr Usyk recently ruled out a fight with Moses Itauma, saying he does not want to \u2018break\u2019 the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-539945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539945","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=539945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}