While the boxing world might be enamoured with the potential of young heavyweight star Moses Itauma, his next opponent, Filip Hrgovic, has been far less complimentary.<\/p>\n
They will fight on August 29 at London\u2019s O2 Arena in a bout that represents a significant step up for the 21-year-old 14-0 (12 KOs) Itauma. <\/p>\n
Hrgovic is 20-1 (15 KOs) but he\u2019s a former Olympic medallist who\u2019s been boxing at world level for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s done well,\u201d Hrgovic said of his burgeoning foe. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019m not so impressed because, for example, I was also a youth world champion like him. Then I went to WSB [World Series of Boxing], to elite level. No one cared. I feel like he got everything on the plate. Youth world champion, boom. Queensberry contract, building him, making him in 14 fights into a big star. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think when you\u2019re a Great Britain fighter, it’s much easier. You have everything. You got a great coach, good manager, good promoter. You have everything. I was youth world champion. No one cared.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a big difference if you come from a small country. If you come from Great Britain, you got everything on the plate. So I\u2019m not impressed. I\u2019m impressed with my path more than him because you need a lot of toughness to endure what I endure. And to go this way alone, without brother, without father, without anyone in family. I need to do everything by myself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout any knowledge about boxing in your country [Croatia], without any tradition. You can\u2019t ask anyone anything about business, about sport. There\u2019s not a lot of general knowledge of boxing. So I needed to do everything by myself. And I\u2019m more impressed with my way than his. <\/p>\n
“For example, I was 19 years old [when] I boxed in London seven rounds, the final of WSB league with a hard guy. That guy is probably better than [Jermaine] Franklin, than [Dillian] Whyte [Itauma\u2019s last two opponents]. I boxed WSB 30 fights with killers, with Cubans, with Russians, with world champions, Olympic champions. No one cared.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo why would I be impressed with Moses Itauma when I have 10 times harder path? And, you know, I\u2019m not impressed, man. I\u2019m not impressed with him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the boxing world might be enamoured with the potential of young heavyweight star Moses Itauma, his next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,142988,710,49,48,55180,12925,82],"class_list":["post-764780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxingnews","tag-boxingscene","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-filip-hrgovic","tag-moses-itauma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764780","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=764780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}