The 21-year-old faces Jermaine Franklin in his 14th outing on Saturday night in the main event at Co-op Live Arena, Manchester live on DAZN.

Itauma (13-0, 11 KOs), already The Ring’s No. 7-rated heavyweight, has been described as the future of the division and a long-ruling champion in waiting.

But the Slovakia-born Brit needed a pep-talk from his coach Ben Davison about a clear lack of enthusiasm for boxing since turning professional three years ago.

“Me and Ben had the conversation,” Itauma said. “It was about him wanting me to be a bit more enthusiastic.

“But this is my work and once you start doing it every day, once money gets involved, the passion kind of just falls off a little bit.

“But I do enjoy it … I do still enjoy it but it’s less about the passion and more about just wanting to reach the goals that I’ve set out for myself.”

Itauma looks well on course to achieve those based on how ruthlessly he has dealt with the opposition so far. Aside from back-to-back points wins in a pair of six-rounders during 2023, he has taken out everyone in the first two rounds.

Most recently he dismantled former world heavyweight title challenger Dillian Whyte in just 119 seconds of their headline clash at Riyadh’s ANB Arena in August. But even that statement victory left Itauma feeling cold.

He said: “When I went back to the changing room I was a little underwhelmed.

“I had been in training camp for all that time, been boxing all these years and I was just like ‘is this it?’

“I didn’t rate Dillian as much as Dillian rated himself and I didn’t think Dillian was as good of a boxer as people think.

“So when I say I think Jermaine Franklin is better than Dillian Whyte, I genuinely mean that. When I boxed Dillian Whyte I wasn’t nervous. To be honest, I wasn’t too fussed.”

It has been suggested that Franklin, who has never been stopped, is the man to extend Itauma beyond a couple of rounds and extra endurance work during training camp has been a reflection of that.

The pair had been scheduled to meet on January 24 until the Chatham southpaw suffered an injury in sparring which caused this delay. For Itauma, that meant he could get things right in the gym.

“I’ve learned to enjoy it,” he said of the endurance training.

“I feel like when I got injured I said to myself ‘okay, look, I’ve got another opportunity to do the camp again.’ Let me make this proper.

“Let me leave no stones unturned. So where I might have done a 5km run on a day, this time I went above and beyond and did 8km.

“Boxing fans want to see a complete fighter and there are still things I want to prove to myself too. If I can prove it to myself, I can prove it to the fans.

“I want to prove my endurance, my ability to go the rounds and my capacity to think under pressure. I believe Franklin is a good fighter and everything I want to prove to myself he does well.”