Heavyweight sensation Moses Itauma is a wise head on young shoulders – with expertly dangerous fists.

Last December he became the most famous teenager in boxing. Now on reaching his 20th birthday, 2025 promises to be the year the rising star of the division really makes his mark.

On a freezing afternoon at the IBOX gym in Bromley, Kent, tucked away behind an industrial estate, Itauma tells Telegraph Sport that he is ignoring comparisons with Mike Tyson, who remains the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history aged 20 years, four months and 22 days.

Itauma insists he will “dodge no one” in the blue-riband division and reveals the mystique surrounding him means that he has already sparred with Tyson Fury, Daniel Dubois, Anthony Joshua and Joe Joyce from the age of 16.

He also reveals he quit the sport after a few sessions early on, but was drawn back through sheer boredom.

He is a remarkable young man and, with an 11-0 win/loss career record (with nine knockouts) already under his belt, its scarcely credible where he might be in a year’s time.

His latest first-round knockout – of Australia’s Demsey McKean – on the undercard of Usyk-Fury 2 in Riyadh on Dec 21 put the rest of the division on notice.

So could Itauma beat Tyson’s record and become a world champion by May this year? “I don’t go there... it’s kind of hard, because it’s a thing I can’t control,” he says. “What is my job? Going in the ring, knocking people out and winning, and I’ve been doing that – seven of my last eight fights have been first-round knockouts... it’s just my job to box.

“It’s not my job [to break records], so yes it’s an ambition, but if I don’t achieve it, so what? I still aimed for the stars. Truth is, I’m just enjoying my job. No one remembers who is the second fastest man in the world after Usain Bolt… no one really knows or cares.”

Itauma is a big man, a southpaw, with flashing fists, speed and dancing feet, already with an aura about him... and thoughtful with his words. “All these accolades are good but I’m just trying to perform. Breaking records is good, I just want to break records that I know I have control over. So with all of them, the youngest heavyweight champs including Mike Tyson, Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, if I don’t break the records I’m still obviously up there with those names but I’m not focusing on that. I’m just tying to knock people out, that’s all I’m focused on – just winning.”

The year stretches out before him with huge opportunities. “I don’t know how many fights I’ll have in 2025, I need to sit down with the team, but I’m not going to dodge anyone, and if I can win an interim heavyweight title this year, then great.”

Itauma is already ranked in the top 15 by three of the world sanctioning bodies, the highest ranking being No 6 with the World Boxing Organisation. Francis Warren, son of Frank Warren, his manager, explained the potential route, and just how good he believes Itauma will be.

Warren jnr said: “The experience we have in this sport is not to listen to the noise. The fanfare of course is a huge part of promoting, but the most important part is that he is moved along at the right pace for his career. Not for other people’s entertainment. The trajectory is perfect at the moment.

“There is no doubt in my mind that he beats 93 per cent of the best in the world right now. Once you go through the gate, however, it slams hard behind you and you have to stay with the big boys. There is a group at the top – Fury, Usyk, Dubois, [Agit] Kabayel, [Martin] Bakole – that we are wary of, but I’d throw him in there with Anthony Joshua right now.

“Obviously, any fight ahead is a tough fight, but he is ready for big fights, and in Moses’s mind, he will fight anyone. That said, this is a business that does not forgive a backward step. We are long in the tooth. I am, my dad is, and Moses is so switched on, so smart as a person and athlete, so we can have sensible conversations... but I believe he’s a Michael Jordan, a Tiger Woods, a Michael Phelps, a Lionel Messi-type talent. And he’s not far off Mike Tyson.”

So, where has the wunderkind sprung from? Itauma has been back from holiday in Marrakesh, Morocco, having celebrated his 20th birthday in Slovakia. “I can’t use the excuse any more that I’m just a teenager, I’m actually growing into a man,” says Itauma.

His mother Martina is Slovakian and his father Charles is Nigerian. He lives in Bromley with his mother, the family having moved to London in 2008. He recalls little of the move as a child but points out that “there were some racism issues” in the country of his birth and that his parents moved for “greater opportunities”.

But the sporting genes were there. “My dad was very athletic, football, sprinting, shot put. My mum did a bit, but nobody did boxing. My mum’s side of the family, if you go to the village in northern Slovakia and you mention the name Blazcek, they are fighting people. I was there last week visiting relatives. They are all fans of me. The whole village have become fans. I’m very grateful and proud of my heritage, but my parents came here to give us a better life.”

Itauma got into boxing when he was nine. “Football was my sport until then, I was big but I was a striker, I was very fast, but then I got into boxing. I can’t sit here and say I’d have made it as a footballer, or been the next Messi.

“I’m 110kg, and ‘making it’ is a broad question. I don’t want to be one of those guys who says if I’d stuck at it, I’d have been this or that. No, I was just playing football for fun, I played for my school team,” says Itauma, who is an Arsenal fan. “Yeah, I’m a Gunner. They didn’t play too well this week, but it is what it is.”

His first trips into the boxing gym, he reveals, were no fun. “My first few sessions were hard, and I quit. I was throwing up, being sick every session, and my feeling was that ‘this is not for me’. I knocked it on the head. I went back to football again, then I got bored of it, and four or five months later I went back to boxing. And here I am now, just over 10 years later, half my life.”

Itauma – now trained by Ben Davison, erstwhile trainer of Fury and current trainer of Joshua – had 20 amateur fights, with 10 knockouts, won national titles, but it was as a sparring partner for the older, more famous heavyweights, where his name found resonance and a degree of wonder within the sport.

Remarkably, Itauma started sparring with the best heavyweights in the country at age 16. “My brother Karol [a light heavyweight] was sparring Lawrence Okolie, because he was getting ready for his world-title fight with Krzysztof Głowacki [in March 2021] and Lawrence needed a bit of sparring. Karol said I’ve got a younger brother and obviously Okolie was very impressed and he mentioned me to AJ, who mentioned me to others and I became a sparring partner for Okolie, Joe Joyce, Daniel Dubois, and then I ended up sparring Joseph Parker and Tyson Fury. I’ve shared a ring with a lot of the guys.”

Famously, for one sparring session with ‘Juggernaut’ Joyce, Itauma turned up in his school uniform. “My school was in Medway, and my trainer said you are sparring Joe Joyce tomorrow and you won’t have enough time to go home and get changed so take your sparring stuff with you to school. After school, he picked me up and we went to the gym.”

It is a story that confirms if you’re good enough, you’re old enough. And sparring Fury? “Oh, it was truly a blessing. Being in his training camp was one thing, sparring with him, but being around him, I got to learn so much. Inside and outside the ring. A great experience.”

‘Natural talent plays big part, but I train very hard’

Dealing with predictions of what might be fame and riches to come, Itauma keeps a level head. Just like Emma Raducanu in tennis, Luke Littler in darts, he is seen as a prodigy. “Natural talent plays a big part, but I do train very hard. I’m dedicated, I listen. That is the recipe to success. Being a great? Who knows? You don’t really get to know until the career is done. I’m just trying to take every fight as it comes.

“I don’t really pay attention to [claims of future greatness]. I’m here entertaining for you guys, it’s great that you label me ‘the takeover’. But it doesn’t do me no favours, I haven’t played other sports so I can’t say it’s the hardest sport on earth. But boxing is pretty hard and I’m confident in myself.

“Been boxing half my life, I’m confident when I get into the ring with all these guys, I know the square circle, and all the names you mention I would fight... but I’m not thinking about a fast career, I don’t think about it. I don’t like talking about it, five years 10 years, life might change. I might wake up tomorrow and lose a foot, you just don’t know. I just don’t like to make plans. Unexpected things can happen.”

Such a solid young man. “I’m not trying to convince people that I’m good. I’m trying to show them... I’m a good guy with bad intentions, maybe, but I’m not trying to be anything... just myself. I get stuck with interviews. Some people analyse life more than I think about it. I’m not a good guy trying to be bad, or a bad guy trying to be good, I’m just me, just trying to get through this boxing game healthy with a lot of money.”

And at Itauma’s core? “I don’t know... I’m just trying to do my job as a boxer.”

Moses Itauma is already special. Maybe very special. Let him prove it.