David Haye says Moses Itauma’s best chance of defeating the “seasoned campaigner” Dillian Whyte is to get him out of there early on Saturday night in their headliner in Riyadh. If Itauma (12-0, 10 KOs) fails to score a knockout, Haye believes Whyte (31-3, 21 KOs) will win a decision.
Why Itauma Must Win Early
“He started his career in an ideal way. His style is to seek and destroy,” said David Haye to BoxNation, talking about Moses Itauma, how he’s been brought along. “If I’m a betting man, I’ll go with Itauma early in the first four rounds or I’ll straddle that with Dillian Whyte on points.
With the way Queensberry has matched Itauma, he could afford to fight in a “seek and destroy” manner because his opposition has been horrid. The fighters Itauma has fought have been garbage, and you could tell from the guys that he’s fought that the intent wasn’t about development. The goal was to create a record and generate a lot of hype.
“It’ll be a fight of two halves. It’ll be the youth, energy, the speed, and the confidence of a young, hungry fighter who knows no better against a seasoned campaigner,” said Haye about Whyte. “He had a professional kick-boxing career as well as 30 international kick-boxing fights before he did his boxing. “So, he couldn’t be more experienced in combat.”
Itauma has shown that he’s capable of moving a lot when facing opposition with power. However, he hasn’t had to do that in the pro ranks because only two of his fights went beyond the second round. If he’s forced to move for more than six rounds, he could get tired because he’s chunky and not built for a highly mobile fight.
“I just hope Moses Itauma treats this fight like it’s the hardest fight because it’s going to be if Dillian turns up. After this fight, we’ll know if his firepower relates to the world stage,” said Haye about Itauma.
From Amateur to Pro Matchmaking
Moses will definitely take the fight seriously, but we don’t know if he can handle the power or having some actually coming to win. The opposition that Queensberry has fed Itauma has been embarrassingly bad. They’ve matched him a lot like Top Rank did with Edgar Berlanga, purposefully feeding mediocre opposition to create hype. It’s unknown if that was the purpose behind Queensberry pitting Itauma against tomato cans.
That’s how Itauma was matched as an amateur. So, they just continued the same routine that his amateur handlers had done with him. So even though Whyte is completely shot at 37, he’s still better than the fighters Itauma has faced. If he were brought up in Ukraine, he’d have fought the best, and we’d know if he’s any good by now. But growing up in the UK, he had it easy.
Last Updated on 08/15/2025
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