Itauma insisted the addition of the title changed nothing about his approach.
“I didn’t really have any reaction,” Itauma said to the media this week. “If I’m already fighting Hrgovic and I’ve got the opportunity for it to be a world title, I said, ‘yeah, chuck the world title on the line.’ I didn’t really have any feeling about it. I was taking Hrgovic seriously anyway, and now that the fight’s for a world title, I’m still taking him seriously. It’s the same fight, isn’t it?”
Careful matchmaking guided Itauma to this point. Mariusz Wach and Mike Balogun were past 40 when they fought him. Dillian Whyte was 37,
