Could Moses Itauma have outpointed Hrgović if he didn’t chase the Finish?

He was like Apollo Creed vs rocky in fight 2.

Should have stayed away in the last round.

 

For some of the rounds where there wasn't as much action Hrgovic seemed very hesitant to throw and reacted quite a lot to Itauma's feigns. If Hrgovic did increase his tempo earlier, he would have likely eaten a lot more counters.

It's frustrating because it's obvious that Hrgovic has a solid chin. Why not focus to the body more and try to take the steam out of his engine instead? Someone like Kabayel would have a field day with Hrgovic, and it's a pity that Itauma's team figured headhunting with no plan B was going to cut it.

 

I was yelling at the TV when Moses stopped throwing as much to the body. They practically always landed, and in certain parts of the fight you could see they were making Hrgovic uncomfortable (especially when they landed on him against the ropes).

But you're right, the gas tank is clearly an issue and that question was answered tonight. Ben is a useless trainer imo, so if Itauma had any sense he'd take a few months off to recover, get a new team, and ease his way back in.

 

i said yes, but that is not 10/10. hrgovic looked best as i've seen him. he might have hunted itauma down late and stopped him even if itauma tried to run away after having banked a theoretically sufficient number of rounds. there are questions out there and can i get a mother****in' rematch?

 

He should have taken a round off.

 

At least Hrgovic gave Itauma "the rounds" the Warrens and Itauma's team were requesting him to provide Itauma with. I assume being slumped over with a tilted neck on the cushioning on the ropes and being carried out on a stretcher was just an added learning experience, lol.

 

Yeah but he wasn't intelligent enough to understand he isn't moving the granite block and should just focus down the back half on boxing that mother as Roger Mayweather would say. Arrogance and stubbornness. He was supposed to be the ruler of the division for the next era but he failed his first test spectacularly and made one of the classic errors in the strategy book of the sport. Everybody knew what not to do against Hrgovic yet it still played out the way it did. He looked great until Hrgovic wasn't going anywhere and was shipping it back on him.

 

Impossible to say, he was dominating the fight but he might not have had much left and maybe that's why he went for the finish, knowing he had to stop Hrgovic or risk being taken out.

 

This might be a controversial opinion, but I don't think Itauma's gas tank is his primary problem. He fights in a style that is very energy-consuming, and he's also not a small heavyweight - I believe he outweighed Hrgovic - so it's only natural that, if you fight like that, you're going to gas out.

Could Itauma pace himself better to win over 12 rounds? Well, this fight exposed two things to me:

1. Itauma is not too comfortable fighting on the back foot.
2. His defence is not perfect.

So, whenever Hrgovic went on the offensive, Itauma's response was to punish him as much as possible with counterpunches, which, again, were very energy-consuming for him. Weirdly, he continued to do that even when he was completely exhausted, so he likely just doesn't know any different.

Can Itauma fight in a way that allows him to control his opponent without draining himself in the process? Maybe he could learn, but he does need to ditch Ben Davison for that. However, I don't believe the version we saw last night was capable of doing it.

 

This is bang on the money.
Hrgovic wasn’t throwing anything early on. When he did start throwing, Moses would retaliate with counters in combination and with intentions. It’s as if his ego couldn’t handle being second in an exchange. All he had to do was cover up and move away.
I said this to my friends during the fight, he needs to adopt more of a Canelo style of fighting. More in spurts and to win rounds, especially if the opponent has a chin and is waiting to come alive in the second half of the fight.

 

Couldn't survive the championship rounds.


Not a champion.

 

Itauma did what they designed him to do – he excelled in attack without any forethought or plan "B." Up until then, it had worked perfectly, so they convinced him, and he believed it himself, that he always had to. And he poured everything he had into Filip from the first bell. He looked like a million bucks, won almost every round, but when you're jumping so hard and punching, you have to expect to expend more energy.
They underestimated Filip. They expected 3-5 rounds and a complete rout. They forgot that this guy was taking bombs from Zhang and Dubois, and he stayed on his feet.
If Itauma had fought smarter, would he have won? It's unknown. If he had punched less, he would have left more space for Filip, and it's important to remember that the Croatian punches hard and very hard. If he hadn't been getting hit in the head constantly, Itauma's advantage would have been much smaller, if at all, and he probably would have taken more blows to the head and other places. It's unclear how he would have handled it.

But look how he lacked the experience and survival instincts that characterize champions – Filip clearly hurt him in that ninth round – his legs didn't suddenly turn into noodles from exhaustion – that was the result of the punches. What did Itauma do? Instead of trying to survive the crisis, clinch, even take a knee at the critical moment (he already had a huge points advantage), he kept punching with all his might – ripping through the air, landing some shots, but constantly looking for exchanges...
A complete lack of experience and foresight. And when it turned out that Filip, even if he got hit, would still keep moving forward, Moses was finished because he didn't even have 10 seconds to recover.

Oh, Warren really went all out with this choice. You could see how extremely unhappy he was after that fight. The Croatian, whom he had cheated in the Dubois fight, was supposed to be a springboard for a new star, not a new champion.