British heavyweight boxing sensational Moses Itauma has revealed meticulous research by trainer Ben Davison helped set him on the path to fall back in love with the sport.
Itauma, 20, is widely regarded as the most exciting prospect in the blue-riband division and faces his toughest test to date on Saturday when he takes on compatriot Dillian Whyte (31-3, 21KOs) in Riyadh.
It will be the 13th fight of Itauma’s (12-0, 10KOs) fledgling career and only his fifth under Davison, but the Chatham southpaw recently detailed how he started to “hate” boxing barely a year after he turned professional at the start of 2023.
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“Being in the ring (sparring) with all these heavyweights Daniel Dubois, Joe Joyce, Tyson Fury, Lawrence Okolie, I know that there are levels to boxing and I just felt like I was unable to learn any more,” Itauma revealed.
“I don’t want to disrespect any of the coaches I tried or did work with. I love and respect them, but with Ben, he taught me a different side to boxing.
“He taught me there is more to boxing than punch, punch, get punched, punch back, punch, punch, punch. There is actually a whole chess game to this.”
Itauma split from old trainer Alan Smith in March, 2024 after a first-round knockout victory over Dan Garber in his eighth professional bout and eventually decided to join Davison’s stacked Essex stable after trials elsewhere.
Davison, who has worked with Fury and more recently Anthony Joshua, is now a key figure in the team of a boxer widely tipped as a soon-to-be world heavyweight champion, but the Slovakian-born fighter may have considered his future in the sport if he had not listened to older brother Karol Itauma (13-1, 8KOs).
“What I mean with falling out of love with boxing is, it was kind of like I felt like I reached a barrier and I was unable to break it,” Itauma added.
“That is why I went around searching for a new trainer to get something new.
“I tried out a lot of coaches and Ben Davison was actually the last one I tried. If I’ll be honest, when I went to Ben, I was like he has too many stars in the gym, he won’t really have time for me, he won’t give me time I need but my brother was like there is no harm in trying Ben Davison.
“And I went there and as I walked through the doors, there is a glass window on the door where you can see inside the gym and Ben has got all my fights up.
“He is writing in his notepad and he was like, ‘you do this, I don’t know if you’re aware of it, now we need to make you aware of this and do this, this and this,’ and I was like, ‘rah, none of the other coaches did that,’.
“And it was only when I started sparring, he would say, ‘if I do this, he will do this and you can capitalise,’ and I would go and do it, it would pay off and I’d be like what!
“Obviously we just clicked from there but the most impressive thing is how you have so many stars in the gym but each individual fighter gets the necessary time.”
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