Moses Itauma did something Saturday night that Anthony Joshua and Dillian Whyte could not. He stopped Jermaine Franklin.
The 21-year-old British heavyweight ended Franklin’s night with a devastating fifth-round knockout at Co-op Live in Manchester, headlining the Magnificent 7 card on DAZN and improving his perfect record to 14-0 with 12 knockouts. Franklin, the rugged American who had absorbed everything Joshua and Whyte threw at him across 24 combined rounds without ever hitting the canvas for good, was left face-first on the canvas after a violent finishing sequence that announced Itauma as something more than a prospect. He looked like the real thing.
“It’s one of the most memorable knockouts ever by a young heavyweight,” said veteran matchmaker Eric Bottjer.
A Methodical Destruction
The knockout did not come cheap. Franklin, who entered at 24-2 with 15 knockouts, had built his reputation on exactly the kind of durability that forces young fighters to think past the first few rounds. Itauma acknowledged as much afterward, admitting he had originally aimed for an early finish.
“I tried to knock him out in the first or second round, trying to win a few people some dough, but I just felt like, ‘Ah, maybe not today,'” Itauma said. “So I went back to the basics, going down to the body, and then the knockout just came.”
What he described as going back to basics looked closer to a controlled demolition. Itauma dominated the opening round with sharp right hooks and left-hand combinations, strafing Franklin with a speed and accuracy the Michigan native could not match. The second round brought more of the same: body shots, jabs, uppercuts, all landing with increasing frequency while Franklin’s chin, the asset that had carried him through world-level competition, held firm but offered no path to winning.
The fight tilted decisively in the third. Itauma landed a heavy right hook early, then drove a body shot through Franklin’s guard before a terrific right hook put the American on the canvas with roughly twenty seconds remaining. Franklin rose and threw a punch before the bell, showing the stubbornness that had earned him respect across two continents, but the writing was on the wall.
A brief lull in the fourth gave Franklin his best stretch of the fight. He landed body shots of his own and showed flashes of the competitive spirit that had taken Joshua the full twelve rounds in April 2023. But Itauma drove him to the ropes with a left hand late in the round, and the momentary resistance looked more like a stay of execution than a shift in momentum.
The end came in the fifth. Itauma landed a right hook that wobbled Franklin, then followed with a left hand that buckled him further. A tremendous left uppercut on the inside, followed by a clubbing right hand, finished it. Franklin fell face-first to the canvas in the kind of emphatic, leave-no-doubt stoppage that separates contenders from curiosities.
“It’s not the shots you load up with,” Itauma said. “It’s the shots that you don’t see.”
What Franklin’s Chin Tells Us
The significance of the stoppage extends beyond the highlight reel. Franklin, 32, from Saginaw, Michigan, was a fighter whose entire professional identity was built on being there at the final bell. He had absorbed Joshua’s power over twelve rounds at The O2 Arena in London, absorbing 117 total punches and walking out on his feet. He had lost a disputed majority decision to Whyte at Wembley Arena in November 2022, a fight many observers scored as a draw or a Franklin win. In his most recent outing, last September in Las Vegas, he outpointed Olympic bronze medalist Ivan Dychko over twelve rounds.
No one had stopped Franklin as a professional. That Itauma did it, and did it with the kind of composed violence that suggested he had more in reserve, speaks to a power output that the heavyweight division has not seen from a 21-year-old since Mike Tyson was dismantling the division’s old guard in the mid-1980s. The comparison is imperfect and overly familiar, but after Saturday night, it is harder to dismiss.
The Rise of Moses Itauma
Itauma was born Enriko Itauma on December 28, 2004, in Kežmarok, Slovakia, to a Nigerian father and Slovak mother. The family left Slovakia for England when he was four years old, driven in part by the racism they experienced there. He settled in Chatham, Kent, followed his older brother Karol, now a professional light heavyweight, into St. Mary’s ABC at age nine, and compiled an undefeated amateur record of 24-0 with 11 knockouts. He collected gold medals at the Youth European Championships and the Heavyweight Youth World Championships before turning professional at 18 with Queensberry Promotions in January 2023.
The professional career has unfolded at a pace that even his promoter, Frank Warren, has struggled to keep up with. Itauma won the vacant WBO Inter-Continental heavyweight title with a second-round stoppage of Ilja Mezencev on the Fury-Usyk undercard in Saudi Arabia in May 2024. He stopped the experienced Mariusz Wach in two rounds at The O2 two months later. He flattened Demsey McKean in one round in Riyadh that December. And in August 2025, he demolished former world title challenger Dillian Whyte in the first round to claim the Commonwealth heavyweight title, a performance that earned him The Ring magazine’s 2024 Prospect of the Year award and put the entire division on formal notice.
Trained by Ben Davison, who previously worked with Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, Itauma fights from a southpaw stance and combines hand speed, timing, and a maturity in the ring that belies his age. He has described Prince Naseem Hamed as his childhood idol and has spoken openly about trying to implement elements of Hamed’s unpredictable style into his own approach, though at 6-foot-4 and around 239 pounds, Itauma’s physical profile is closer to a young Lennox Lewis than the featherweight showman from Sheffield.
The Path to a World Title
Entering Saturday, Itauma was ranked No. 1 by both the WBO and the WBA, No. 3 by the WBC, and No. 11 by the IBF. The WBO heavyweight title now belongs to his gymmate Fabio Wardley, who was upgraded to full champion following his win over Joseph Parker late last year. Oleksandr Usyk holds the WBA (Super), WBC, and IBF belts, though the unified landscape continues to fracture under the weight of mandatory obligations from multiple sanctioning bodies.
Warren, speaking after Saturday’s knockout, signaled that a world title shot could come before the end of 2026.
“He’ll be out again probably in July,” Warren said. “We’ll be announcing something once we sit down and look at a few things. He’s No. 1 in the WBO, and he’s No. 1 in the WBA. There’s a lot of fights happening over the next few months, and we’ll sort something out.”
The timeline may have accelerated within hours of the knockout. WBO President Gustavo Olivieri posted on X Saturday night that he would formally recommend to the WBO Championship Committee that Itauma be designated as the mandatory challenger in the heavyweight division. The post, which was reposted by the WBO’s official account, cited Itauma’s position as the No. 1 world-rated contender and his knockout of fellow world-rated contender Franklin in defense of his WBO Inter-Continental title. If the committee approves the designation, WBO heavyweight champion Fabio Wardley would be obligated to face Itauma or risk being stripped of the belt.
“When Usyk retires, Itauma is going to be the standard bearer,” Bottjer said.
Itauma himself had once harbored ambitions of breaking Tyson’s record as the youngest heavyweight world champion in history, a mark set at 20 years and 145 days when Tyson stopped Trevor Berbick for the WBC title in November 1986. That window has closed. But the broader goal remains very much alive. At 21 with 14 professional fights and a knockout percentage above 85, Itauma is tracking ahead of where most historically significant heavyweights were at the same stage of their careers.
The question is no longer whether Itauma belongs in the world title conversation. After Manchester, it is how soon the conversation becomes a fight.
