‘You need an identity crisis to discover who you are’

Moses Itauma, the highly touted heavyweight prospect, talks to Alex Pattle ahead of his fight against Dillian Whyte today

- 

It’s interesting.

Moses Itauma, over the course of a 40-minute conversation, does not seem as cold as he once did. Yet the 20-year-old still touts a detached mindset as important for success and peace. “What makes me happy?” he asks. “I don’t really know, I don’t chase happiness. I feel like a lot of people are too enslaved to their emotions, and that's where problems come. I'm disciplined to what I've got to do."

Itauma, perhaps the most exciting heavyweight prospect in years, might have worked on coming across slightly more gently. Indeed, he told The Independent earlier this year: "I watch my interviews and think... 'Ah, I shouldn't have said that. Ah, I should be smiling.' When I first turned professional, I wanted to be unapproachable. But I [started] thinking: 'I look like a proper prick"

The unbeaten Londoner, whose roots trace back to Slovakia and Nigeria, touches on this theme again today, in a conversation with The Independent and other publications. "I feel like everybody has to go through a period of like... a bit of an identity crisis, and actually discover themselves," he says.

Itauma has not only been discovering who he is outside the ring; he has been discovering whether his entire identity is tied to that ring. "I was a very angry kid," he admits. "If you put an angry kid – and a big boy – in boxing, he's bound to do some damage... or receive some."

Thus far, it has been all the former, none of the latter, with Itauma going 12-0 with 10 knockouts. Perhaps the biggest statement so far was the southpaw's December evisceration of Demsey McKean – a sturdy, proven opponent. At least, the Australian had seemed sturdy, before suffering two sickening knockdowns in two minutes against Itauma.