Moses Itauma’s Loss: You Need a Plan for the Opponent Who Refuses to Go Away

Watching Moses Itauma lose to Filip Hrgović was painful because, for most of the fight, Moses looked like the better boxer.

He was faster, sharper and landing the cleaner punches. Hrgović himself admitted afterwards that Moses was winning the rounds. Yet Hrgović kept absorbing everything. Moses had never previously gone beyond six rounds as a professional. This time, the opponent simply refused to disappear.

That exposed something his previous knockouts had never really tested.

By the eighth, Moses was tired but still trying to force the stoppage. He launched another sustained attack and Hrgović just took it. That seems to have emptied whatever Moses had left.

By the ninth, his legs were completely gone. He could barely steady himself. Hrgović came forward, and Moses's corner eventually threw in the towel.

The obvious homework is the gas tank, but I now think “build his endurance” is only part of the lesson.

He also needs pacing, patience and a genuine plan for a long fight.

Hrgović's strategy was almost the opposite. He recognised that Moses was faster and that he was losing the rounds, but he also noticed Moses was burning energy. So he accepted losing the early rounds, trusted his chin and waited.

That is what experience looks like.

I had wondered whether Hrgović's attempts to get into Moses's head affected him. Maybe. I don't know. Perhaps there was also some frustration in repeatedly hitting a man who simply would not go away.

What is clearer is that Moses kept investing energy in achieving a knockout that was becoming less and less necessary.

I initially saw this mostly as a conditioning failure: Moses won the fight until his body failed him.

But there is a deeper lesson: once the early knockout didn't come, he needed to change the plan.

If you are comfortably ahead, you don't necessarily need to keep trying to move the immovable object.

Win the rounds. Manage the distance. Recover when possible. Preserve enough of yourself that if the fight reaches nine, ten, eleven or twelve, you are still capable of fighting.

That is one thing I admire about Usyk.

His endurance isn't merely the ability to survive twelve rounds. He seems to understand how to spread his energy across twelve rounds so that late in the fight, when other heavyweights are fading, he can still produce.

Moses is still an extraordinary talent. Hrgović himself called him one of the division's most talented fighters. This loss doesn't change that.

If anything, at 21, he has just discovered a weakness that years of early knockouts had hidden from him.

Now the homework is clear: build the gas tank, learn to pace the fight, and stop assuming every opponent will cooperate with the knockout script.

Some people simply won't go away.

You need a plan for them too.