Moses Itauma predicts that he’s going to knock out Dillian Whyte “fairly quick” on Saturday night in Riyadh. The Queensberry-promoted Itauma (12-0, 10 KOs) says he will KO Whyte (31-3, 23 KOs) if he follows “the game plan” in their 12-round headliner on DAZN PPV. The event is priced at $49.99.
The flimsy resume of Moses Itauma
Already ranked #1 by the WBO despite zero victories over credible opponents, the 20-year-old Itauma is being hyped as the next great British heavyweight and is already fighting on PPV.
“If I box by the game plan, I should do, yes,” said Moses Itauma to BoxNation when asked if he believes he’ll knock out Dillian Whyte on Saturday. “Fairly quick. I don’t know if he matches me speed for speed. Whatever they have, I’ll come prepared. I can’t wait to rock and roll.”
Who has Itauma knocked out that makes him believe he’ll stop Dillian so quickly? 45-year-old Mariusz Wach? 41-year-old Mike Balogun? The opposition that Queensberry has fed Itauma has been frightfully bad.
“It doesn’t matter to me. I still get paid the same if I sell 10 tickets or 50 tickets. You want me to acknowledge everything and put pressure on myself,” said Itauma.
Did Itauma really train for 16 weeks?
“It wasn’t a 16-week camp for Dillian Whyte. I had a 16-week camp in general because I boxed Mike Balogun, which obviously was a tough training session and a tough camp,” said Itauma. “Even if the opponent wasn’t the greatest, I still needed to train like he was. The training camp was still tough. I had a week’s rest and then went back straight into training camp.”
Itauma’s physique still looks chubby for someone who has gone through a 16-week camp. If he really was in a training camp that long, he must not have pushed himself to the limit in terms of cardio and diet because he’s still showing a lot of fat around his frame. If he were training hard, that fat wouldn’t be there. With the way Itauma is being pumped up as the next great heavyweight, it’s got to be hard to give him directions as a trainer. How do you make him do something if he feels like he’s only going through the motions? Again, Itauma doesn’t resemble a fighter that has gone through a 16-week camp.
“I think it’s a completely different version of Dillian. I reckon he’s going to try to box me, because he’s lost the weight. Obviously, he’s not going to try to knock me out or bang me out in the first couple of rounds. He’s not going to want to have a tear-up with me because he can’t do that for 10 rounds. So, I think he’s going to try and outbox me,” said Itauma.
Whyte has got the kind of power to go to war with Itauma for 10 to 12 rounds. We don’t know how well Itauma can take a punch because his opposition his so poor, both at the amateur and professional level. Whyte could knock out Itauma if he lands anything hard in this fight. This is really the first time in Itauma’s life that he’s fought a puncher.
If you look at the records of Itauma’s opponents during his brief amateur career, it’s shocking how poor they were. He never reached the level of fighters typically seen in top amateurs.
At the professional level, Itauma has been matched against strictly lesser fighters by his promoters at Queensberry, yet he’s been hyped like he’s been facing killers. It makes you suspicious that he’s being sold to the public as being better than he is.
Given the hype that Itauma has received, he should have been fighting better opposition. It’s different in the UK than it is in the U.S. To receive the kind of praise and publicity that Itauma is receiving, he’d have had to fight killers if he were American.
Last Updated on 08/11/2025
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