There are heavyweights, and then there's Moses Itauma. Still in the early years of his professional career, he isn't just Britain's next great hope. He might be the most exciting young heavyweight in the world.
Who Is Moses Itauma?
Moses Itauma is a British professional heavyweight boxer, born on 28 December 2004 in Kežmarok, Slovakia. He holds British nationality and is of mixed Nigerian and Slovakian heritage. His father is Nigerian and his mother is Slovakian. The family left Slovakia when Moses was young and settled in Chatham, Kent, where he grew up and discovered boxing.
His real first name is Enriko, named after his mother's favourite musician, Enrique Iglesias. When he turned professional, he chose to go by Moses, his middle name, because it sounded strong for a heavyweight. That deliberate thinking says something about the person behind the fighter.
He trains under Ben Davison at the Ben Davison Performance Centre in Essex, the same gym as Anthony Joshua and Fabio Wardley, and is promoted by Frank Warren's Queensberry Promotions. You can follow his latest record and upcoming fights on his Queensberry Promotions profile.
Moses Itauma's Parents, Background, and Ethnicity
To understand the fighter, you need to know where he came from and the journey that brought him here.
Moses Itauma was born to a Nigerian father and a Slovakian mother in the small town of Kežmarok in eastern Slovakia, a few miles from the Carpathian mountains. It is about as far from the bright lights of professional boxing as you can get. But life there was not easy. The family faced significant racial abuse, and his mother had seen enough.
Moses described it plainly: "Me and my brothers got racially abused. It wasn't a good place to be." His middle brother Samuel had it particularly hard. Their mother decided to move. His father, who had previously lived in the UK, knew where they were headed.
The family relocated to England in stages, eventually settling in Chatham, Kent, in 2008. Moses was the last to leave Slovakia, spending time with his grandmother before joining the rest of the family. He was three years old when they first moved. He grew up British, in a working-class town with a strong boxing heritage. The rest is history.
He has spoken about his mixed heritage with real pride. "I have a military-like discipline from my mother's side and I am just a genetic freak from my dad's side," he said. "It is like I was made in a lab and this was all planned: Project Itauma."
Moses Itauma's Brothers: The Family Boxing Connection
Moses isn't the only fighter in the family. His older brother Karol Itauma is a professional light heavyweight boxer, also promoted by Queensberry. It was Karol who first got Moses into boxing.
At nine, Moses followed his brother to the gym. He found it hard, quit after a few sessions, then switched to football with Samuel. Bored, he returned to boxing. Within a few years, he won national and European titles.
That nudge from Karol was the sliding doors moment. As Moses has said, if Karol had not dragged him to the gym that day, none of this would have happened.
How Did Moses Itauma Get Into Boxing?
In St Marys Amateur Boxing Club in Chatham, he trained from nine to seventeen. That gym and its coaches gave him the foundation for everything that followed.
His amateur career was exceptional. He went unbeaten across all his bouts, winning gold medals at English Schools, European Juniors, English Youth, European Youth and the World Youth Championships. He was one of the most decorated British amateur heavyweights of his generation before he turned eighteen.
He turned professional in January 2023, two days after his eighteenth birthday, signing with Frank Warren's Queensberry Promotions. His debut was on the undercard of the Artur Beterbiev vs Anthony Yarde card at Wembley Arena, where he knocked out his opponent in twenty-three seconds.
The division had been warned.
Moses Itauma's Professional Record and Career So Far
Since turning professional, Itauma has been dominant, maintaining an undefeated record. Most of his opponents have not advanced beyond the early rounds, highlighting his skill and power. Notable achievements include a second-round stoppage of Mariusz Wach, who had previously gone the distance with Wladimir Klitschko, and a first-round demolition of Dillian Whyte in August 2025 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which secured him the Commonwealth heavyweight title.
That Whyte performance announced him to a mainstream audience. Whyte had only been stopped by world championship-level opposition. Itauma dealt with him in under two minutes.
He was voted The Ring Magazine's 2024 Prospect of the Year, a significant honor. At the time of writing, he is ranked number one by the WBA and WBO in the heavyweight division. Full and current records are available on his Queensberry Promotions profile.
Itauma is a southpaw. He leads with his right hand and generates power through his left. At over six feet four inches tall, with an exceptional reach, he is a physically imposing heavyweight. But it is not his size that makes him special. It is what he does with it.
He is a student of the sport in the truest sense. Growing up, he watched Prince Naseem Hamed on repeat, studying the footwork, the angles, the unpredictability. He has drawn influence from Floyd Mayweather, Vasiliy Lomachenko, Gervonta Davis and George Foreman. The result is a style that doesn't fit neatly into one box: fast hands, fluid movement, genuine knockout power, and a ring IQ that coaches and analysts consistently describe as years ahead of his age.
His trainer, Ben Davison, has introduced video analysis to every training session. Every sparring round is recorded and reviewed. This has produced a fighter who is deeply conscious of his own habits and is constantly evolving.He described the mentality well himself: "The key component is being conscious. When you are in training, some fighters are thinking about all of this stuff that doesn't matter, but with me, I'm very conscious and in the training session."
He also sparred with Anthony Joshua at sixteen and with Tyson Fury across multiple training camps. That experience, gained before most fighters turn professional, has hardened him in ways that do not show up in the stats.
The Protection Behind the Fighter
At the highest levels of boxing, every piece of kit matters. When you are trading punches with some of the hardest hitters on the planet, protection is not an afterthought. It is the foundation on which everything else is built.
Ask the people around him, and the answer is unequivocal. Frank Warren, his promoter, has called him the most unbelievable finisher he has seen. Ben Davison, one of Britain's most respected coaches, has structured his entire development around a path to the top. The WBA and WBO already rank him as their number one contender.
Ask Moses himself, and he's measured, but clear. "I don't want to be compared to Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson or Anthony Joshua," he has said. "I just want to be myself and make my own career."
That mindset, focused, self-aware, immune to the hype, is as important as anything he does in the ring. He has seen what happens to young fighters who let the spotlight distract them. He has chosen a different path.
"All the fighters I grew up with were a lot more talented than me, but they're not here today because they chose the party life," he said. "I just knew that if I put all my energy into boxing, I could get somewhere."
Whether a world title comes in the next year or two, or takes longer, Moses Itauma is on a trajectory that few fighters in the history of British boxing have matched at this stage. The heavyweight division knows he is coming. It is only a matter of time.
Follow Moses Itauma's career on his Queensberry Promotions profile. His next fight takes place on 28 March 2026 at the Co-op Live Arena in Manchester. Live on DAZN in the UK and US.
