“Your career starts from when you know who you really are,” David Haye told me last night.
He was speaking about Moses Itauma’s shock loss to Filip Hrgovic on Saturday at London’s O2 Arena, and it reminded him of his early career loss to veteran Carl Thompson.
Haye was quickly taken back to Wembley in 2004 , when he lost to Thompson having dominated early when, like Itauma, he unravelled and was stopped.
Haye, now, though, believes the loss is the making of the 21-year-old Itauma.
“And there’s very few fighters who go through their career and never lose,” Haye adds. “Very, very few…. You’ve got to figure out who you are and what works for you and you don’t know what works until you know what doesn’t work. And this is the start of Moses Itauma. This is when he realises, ‘Okay, I know where I am. This is where I can beat a world class fighter over seven rounds doing what I was doing. So I can either train in a way where I can throw the amount of punches I was throwing for a few more rounds, or reduce it down, maybe not throw so many power punches, maybe mix the power punches with sharp little looser punches. There’s so much. The door’s open for him to design his style.”
Haye, who stuck with his coach Adam booth through the rockiest of waters, implored Itauma to remain with coach Ben Davison.
“Him and Ben need to sit down, watch the fight, from start to finish, and go ‘Okay, what are we going to do now. How are we going to make this over 12 rounds. How are we going to do it. How are we going to play it? Who are we going to spar with? What are we going to practice?’ And start from now,” Haye continues. “What a great place to start, being that cloe to being heavyweight champion of the world.
“He’s been very comfortable up to this point. It was very uncomfortable on Saturday night and he [Itauma] needs to bring that uncomfortableness into camp [in the shape of formidable sparring partners].”
