Fabio Wardley has some inside information about Moses Itauma‘s training camp and the debate around whether or not he did 12 rounds in preparation for Filip Hrgovic.
Itauma stepped up to his first world title fight last weekend and won all of the eight rounds convincingly. Arguably too convincingly, in fact, because he was using up more energy than he needed to and quickly began to tire, so that by the ninth round he had nothing left and was then picked off by Hrgovic, who forced the referee to step in and stop the fight.
It was the first time he had gone beyond six rounds in a professional fight, and a clip began circulating of him saying he had not done 12 rounds even in training ahead of the contest.
Speaking to talkSPORT Boxing, Wardley defended Itauma’s preparation.
“Harking back to that video you saw, I know Moses did do 12 rounds multiple times in the build-up to the fight. Not at the point of that video, but there’s a reason for that. You build up towards something.
“If you speak to a marathon runner and ask them if they did a marathon in preparation, they say no. So he may have done 8 rounders, 10 rounders, then finished on 12.
“We’re not doing 12-rounders week in, week out, I won’t make it to the fight. You’ve got to properly manage and pace yourself through, so I know that he did.”
While he has called for a rematch, Hrgovic is more likely to defend his IBF belt against his mandatory challenger, Frank Sanchez, next, after he agreed to step aside to allow this fight to happen.
