I would lean towards Itauma not having a great chin

Nobody is handling 250+ pound puncher heavyweight shots. Whether they get wobbled, hurt, dropped or KO'd flat. Don't get hit is the ideal.

Ituama is 20 years old and hardly the biggest heavy going. Hone that craft.

None of this pool of heavyweights can rise to the top if they don't keep honing their boxing craft. Plodding with power you will always find a bigger fish to fry you. Hence why Fury & Usyk are so clear of the pack, that finesse of feet and positioning reigns supreme.

 

And of course, he's so mercurial and immune from being fried that no 0-0 novice could possibly flatten him.

/Sarc

 

You know very well Fury handles anyone not named Usyk.

 

Make him vs Kabayel

 

You know very well that Fury handled anyone not named Usyk... That he dared to fight...

Sometimes not without a struggle, and often when he struggled it was against people he, in theory, shouldn't have done.

Fury's one of the luckiest fighters around - run his career again and he could easily have had a bunch of losses... And could easily have wound up not getting his biggest fights.

He's not a fraud, he's a good fighter - but he's also a lucky boy.

 

Belly dancer Vs Belly drummer?

 

Fury was close to fighting Kabayel before he made a name for himself and everyone cried like proper babies! Plenty of threads saying Fury was a bum and he'd fight unbeaten Kabayel to pad his resume. Funny times. Then you'll find me in them threads saying Kabayel is no joke and there is reason why top dogs have him for sparing including Fury. To be fair a few boxing heads were fair.

here:

https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/fury-vs-kabayel-will-be-a-war.658109/

https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/tyson-fury-vs-agit-kabayel-likely-for-december-5th.657817/

 

Ituama needs rounds, but unless he's packing glass or lacking heart, he's got a ton of potential. He's got quicker hands than anyone in the division by a lot, and his power looks legit. He's not scoring knockdowns and knockouts off combos -- one good punch landed flush knocks his opponents down.

He's going to be an interesting one to watch.

 

You could think that having a great chin would definitely impact the way a fighter fights, since the fighter can trust his chin and he knows it his boxing can be more risky.

But it has been proven that we cannot think like that and deduce how a fighter's chin is by the way a fighter fights. There are many fighters with great chin whose boxing is based on not being hit.

The most obvious example in the recent times is mayweather imho. He has an atg chin, however he fights as if his chin were pure china.

The only way to know how a chin is is by directly testing it.

 

Or on the flip side Khan, who's paper mache chin didn't stop him wading in like he's George Chuvalo, especially after getting dropped !

 

Francis Ngannou enters the room.