By his own admission, Moses Itauma doesn’t have any idols or people who he looks up to as inspiration.
But even he couldn’t help but feel a little starstruck when he was first introduced to Mike Tyson.
The pair met in Saudi Arabia in October, when Itauma, who is promoted by Frank Warren, was fighting on the undercard of Tyson Fury’s clash with Francis Ngannou.
As the youngest heavyweight world champion in history, Iron Mike was only too happy to impart some of his knowledge to the teenager from Kent, who has stated his ambition of claiming that record for himself.
Tyson was just 20 years old when he stopped Trevor Berbick to win the WBC heavyweight title in 1985. At 19, Itauma knows that the clock is ticking – but won’t completely rule it out.
“It’s something that I definitely want to achieve,” Itauma told BoxingScene.com.
“There’s a lot of external factors that I can’t control. I can only do what I can do to the best of my ability. We’ll see when I get there.
“I’ve got huge respect for Mike Tyson, for what he’s achieved in his career, I listened to what he had to say to me.
“He told me I can learn from every fight – even the losses. Hopefully there won’t be any of those but I appreciated his advice. He also told me not to underestimate any of my opponents.
“That whole week felt surreal. But you’ve got to keep moving forwards. You can’t think about the past – only about the future.”
Itauma was originally slated to face Solomon Dacres for the English heavyweight title. However, it turns out that David Adeleye will now get that opportunity instead.
For his part, Itauma says he is happy to wait his turn, as long as he gets to fight the winner later this year.
“I’m not too bothered. Obviously I was mandatory for Solomon Dacres’ belt,” he said.
“They didn’t take it. I would have loved to have fought him. He didn’t want that fight for whatever reason.
“He’s got to fight David Adeleye now anyway, but we’ll see what happens after that.
“I think Adeleye is a good fighter. I think Dacres should be the better fighter. He’s been boxing for a lot longer than Adeleye.
“I’m intrigued to see how that goes. Maybe I’ll get the winner, maybe I won’t. I leave that all to my manager.
“At the end of the day, I don’t care who gets put in front of me. The result will be the same. I hope it’s one of them.”
Despite his age, Itauma (7-0, 5 KOs) has already sparred seasoned pros with way more experience than he has, including the likes of Anthony Joshua and Lawrence Okolie.
And while he wouldn’t go into detail about the nature of those sparring sessions with Joshua, he backed his former training partner to defeat ex-UFC champion Ngannou in their upcoming bout.
“I believe Joshua will walk through him to be honest,” he admitted.
“I don’t like speaking on shoes that I’ve never been in. But I feel like it was an off night for Fury. Fury told me he took Ngannou seriously but there were loads of external factors that made the fight play out the way it did.
“Ngannou had the best night of his life. It’s an interesting match-up [against Joshua]. No one is invincible.
“I was definitely shocked at what happened [to Fury] but at the same time I wasn’t surprised. Anything can happen at heavyweight. It only takes one punch.”