The 20-year-old boxer is due to face The Body Snatcher, 37, on Saturday (16.08.25) at the ANB Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in what will be the rising star’s biggest match of his career so far, though Itauma isn’t going to let the stress get to him.
Speaking with Channel 4, he said: “I’m going in there and I’m doing a job. It’s just like, this job’s harder than the others.
“So I don’t really see all that extra pressure and all that, what not, outside the ring. He’s definitely the best boxer I’m going to box, as in officially. I’m confident to go in this fight.”
Itauma added he was not in boxing for the money, but for the love of the sport.
He said: “I need to do it, it’s like a drug, obviously I’ve got to maximise my career as we’re doing it and I’ve a good family, a good team behind me to advise me in the right direction because I’ve made some silly mistakes.
“I remember when I was 18 or 19 years old. And I got my first kind of like large sums of money, and my adviser, he said, ‘Do you want to be the young guy with a secure future, or do you wanna be with the young, flash guy, who’s got nice things?’
“I said, ‘Who cares about the future? So give me the nice things.’ And then it came back to bite me.
“So I was like, ‘Okay cool.’ Like there’s … I need to actually like set myself up.”
While Itauma is determined to put on a good show against Whyte, the young boxer is still very much the underdog, and The Body Snatcher has made that clear.
Talking about his opponent, Whyte told The Independent: “Today, he’s the next Mike Tyson, he’s amazing, they’re talking about him fighting [Oleksandr] Usyk.
“If I go in there and blow Moses out in one round, what are people gonna say? He’s not good anymore? That’s what the media will say. ‘Moses Itauma was overhyped.’ No, that doesn’t mean that; it just means he fought a good fighter and got caught.
“He hasn’t been tested, hasn’t been hurt, everything’s going great in his career. He’s got that blissful ignorance. But [my] experience doesn’t really matter unless I make it matter.”
