'Moses Itauma is only a three-round fighter,' says former world champion

The job of rebuilding Moses Itauma following his devastating collapse against Filip Hrgovic last month will not be an easy one, says George Groves.

The former super middleweight champion bounced back from consecutive losses to Carl Froch, and another to Badou Jack, to win a world belt in his fourth title shot.

Itauma was widely expected to beat Hrgovic when they clashed for the vacant IBF heavyweight title. The 21-year-old dominated the early action before dramatically running out of gas.

He was stopped in the ninth.

Groves does not believe his team need to rip it up and start again. But tweaks might be required to a style known for its fast and furious nature. 

"It's not an easy task but I hope that there isn't a lot of mental scarring there and they can go back and not try and reinvent,” Groves told Sky Sports.

“Keep what he is but just give him more comfort and confidence in the pacing of the fight.

"Maybe it will come with age, that endurance that he can be much more of a 12 round fighter than a three-round fighter. 

At the moment he's a three-round fighter. That's the sad fact of it. He's not even a six-round fighter. I thought he was gassing a bit from the third round on.

"He's that sort of athlete, extremely fast twitch and when he punches he puts maximum effort into it. But that depletes the engine. At times he's probably never really had to work on it.

"But he's going to have to be much more efficient in his work."

So, what next for Itauma?

"If I had to rebuild Moses Itauma. I would drop him obviously down a level but I've got to be honest I think his management has been great so far. I'm not buying into 'the Hrgovic fight was a step too far'. It was what it was. It was the right fight to make. It got elevated to a world title," he said.

"It was logical to elevate it to a world title and with that maybe came some pressure. Moses, he probably thought he had Hrgovic gone and he didn't and put his foot on the gas a bit too much and he gassed out. So he's going to have to own that a little bit. They'll change and adapt within his training team to patch that up.

"The toughest job in boxing is probably navigating Itauma's career because he's been so good, so fast, so early, so young."