Itauma wants a rematch with Hrgovic

Moses Itauma is eager to get back at Filip Hrgovic.

The boxer from Chatham lost in the ninth round on Saturday night at London’s O2 Arena. He missed the chance to be the second-youngest heavyweight world champion.

Itauma was leading on all three judges’ scorecards after eight rounds. But he ran out of energy in the ninth, and Hrgovic took advantage to win the fight.

The 21-year-old left the ring on a stretcher and went to the hospital. He was released a few hours later.

After he got home, Itauma called his promoter, Warren, to ask for a rematch right away.

“He’s saying to me, ‘Can we get the rematch on?’ which is a natural reaction,” Warren told talkSPORT Breakfast on Monday morning.

“But I told him, ‘You have got to switch off from boxing, go and chill out and spend some time with your family and come back, recharge your batteries and then we get to work again.

“’The landscape is what it is; you are a big part of it. You have shown you belong at that level’.

“Provided he learns the lessons from the fight, I think he can go on and do great things.”

Itauma is ready to jump right back into the ring, which is typical for him. But Warren thinks it would be better for him to take a step back for his next few fights.

“I would like to see him in at least one, maybe two fights and see where we go before we go [back to that level].

“We’ve got to sit down with the whole team and discuss this.

“His manager is my son Francis, and all of us will get together to look at it.

“I’ve been around the game long enough; I knew on the night what was going to happen.

“I was sat next to his brother, and after the seventh he looked like he was puffing a bit and then in the eighth round he came out with a big round.

“I said, ‘He’s going to punch himself out’. I could see what was going to happen…

“He had his foot stuck down on overdrive, and that was it.

“I believe 98 per cent of the heavyweight fighters would have got stopped on Saturday by the punches he was throwing.

“And I said to him only recently, ‘There will come a time when you come against someone who can take a shot, and you’ll have to get to plan B’.

“That’s what happened on the night, and it’s happened to so many fighters over the years, especially big-punching fighters.

“But with him, he put so much into it that he didn’t have the strength to box.

“If he could have boxed the last few rounds, maybe he would have got through that because he was miles ahead on points.

“The only way Filip could have won was to knock him over, which is what he did at the end of the day.