It's mad how little buzz there is for this. I popped into my parents' place yesterday & my Dad mentioned the boxing Saturday. I started talking about Itauma & it turns out he meant the girls' card as he'd seen it advertised on Sky
Don't know why but I find this hilarious. More people are going to be tuned into Shannon's comeback than seeing if Noakes can put himself back into title contention. Hopefully someone points it out to Brick-Top in the build-up.
I’ve not seen a lot of publicity for this fight or read many previews. However, there seem to be two prevailing thoughts: Hrgovic is underrated and could cause a shock, or Itauma will be way too good and this is a really good test on the way to world domination. It’s a tricky one because I see both sides of those points. Itauma simply looks incredible: great balance, timing, speed, power, and he’s a big guy as well. The other thing is that his pedigree stacks up. He’s been spoken about for years as being precocious, and the sparring stories precede him. That’s important to me because it goes some way towards showing that he’s not a hype job. He could be something really, really special. However, I’ve long felt that Hrgovic has been underrated. He’s had underwhelming fights against the likes of Zhang and McKean. The former, I legitimately thought he won despite the protests. He’s a big guy with solid fundamentals and a good jab-right hand. He isn’t blessed with concussive, one-punch power, but he’s still handy enough to upset opponents. His biggest issue, for me, is that he goes to sleep in fights or takes minutes off. To be frank, he can be perceived as boring. What can’t be questioned is his chin. He’s never been stopped, as far as I know, amateur or professional, with the exception of the Dubois fight, which was stopped because of cuts. It’s unquestionable that he has superb resistance as well as toughness, because you don’t fight at the top level of heavyweight amateur boxing, in the WSB and as a professional for 15 years without having a legitimate KO loss unless you possess those attributes. The problem I see is that I think his attacking weaponry might not be enough to give Itauma real problems. But I’d be surprised if Itauma were able to do what no one else has done and get him out of there early. The chances will come late for Hrgovic - Itauma has never been past six rounds, and at some point, there will be an opening. Overall, I think Hrgovic is underrated - not necessarily in the context of this fight, but as an overall package in the context of the heavyweight scene. I expect we’ll see a closer fight than many expect.
It's a proper gatekeeper fight. Questionable credentials as a title fight but whatever. For me this is one of those fights where the big puncher finds out of he's a really big puncher, and maybe what happens if the opponent doesn't go down at the drop of a hat. That's why I like it. We've got tix and I hoping Hrgovic can take him into deep water then we'll see what happens.