![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/54704_968434_updates.jpg\")
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An undated picture of British boxer Fabio Wardley. \u2014 Reuters<\/p>\n
Moses Itauma\u2019s promoter, Frank Warren and sanctioning body WBO are looking for a title fight between the former and Fabio Wardley, but the heavyweight champion dismissed the idea by saying he wants even bigger fights.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s rising heavyweight Itauma delivered the biggest performance of his career, scoring a fifth-round knockout against the never-before-stopped Jermain Franklin at Manchester\u2019s Co-op Live Arena on Saturday.<\/p>\n
He was oozing with confidence at the post-fight press conference following the match.<\/p>\n
Itauma hardly celebrated the win and was waved off, not because Franklin still lay flat on the floor, but because he was confident enough that he could do something both Anthony Joshua and Dillian Whyte could not.<\/p>\n
Itauma became the WBO\u2019s No.1 contender even before the Franklin victory, and the sanctioning body\u2019s president, Gustavo Olivieri, said just after the fight, \u201che has further affirmed his standing within the division as a rising star.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI will recommend to the championship committee that Itauma be designated as the mandatory challenger in the WBO heavyweight division.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oliveiri\u2019s stance proves Warren\u2019s recent comments prescient. \u201cI\u2019m pretty confident [Itauma] will fight for the world title this year,\u201d he said after his boxer\u2019s latest win. \u201cVery confident.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, the WBO champion himself wants big fights like Oleksandr Usyk, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s two of us and there\u2019s four belts,\u201d Wardley said of the prospect of fighting Moses Itauma.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot to go around, there\u2019s a lot of fighters in between, and we\u2019re in different places.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m looking up in terms of [Oleksandr] Usyk, [Tyson] Fury, and AJ [Anthony Joshua]. Those type of guys. But Moses is looking for a fight between that, like [Filip] Hrgovic \u2014 a fantastic fight for him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An undated picture of British boxer Fabio Wardley. \u2014 Reuters Moses Itauma\u2019s promoter, Frank Warren and sanctioning body…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,81762,12926,12925,82,118602,9573],"class_list":["post-570694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fabio-wardley","tag-itauma","tag-moses-itauma","tag-sports","tag-wardley","tag-wbo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570694","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=570694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}