“In the first two months of me being professional, I realised that goal’s impossible. I was naive when I said that. I said that before I turned professional.

“I didn’t realise how much you can’t control in this boxing game. You think since I turned professional, the world champions have been Daniel Dubois, Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury.

“There’s no way in two years I would have put myself in a position to fight them.”

Itauma’s two-round destruction of Mike Balogun on Saturday extended his record to 12 wins and 10 knockouts.

He was initially marketed as the teenager to break Tyson’s record, but denied it was only ever a clever “marketing strategy” for his career.