David Price has spent enough time in heavyweight rings to know which punchers leave a mark. The former British heavyweight champion, now one of the more sober analysts in the British boxing media, has issued a clear warning to Moses Itauma's team about the one heavyweight he believes the 21-year-old should not be sharing a ring with this year — Deontay Wilder.
Price's intervention follows weeks of speculation that Wilder, who has hinted publicly at one final marquee fight to close out his career, could be lined up against Itauma at some point in 2026. Wilder has been clear about the names he wants. Price's argument is that Itauma's team should be equally clear about the name they should swerve.
"Deontay Wilder, credit to him," Price said. "He wants the name that everyone wants to avoid and you have got to take your hat off to him."
That acknowledgement was the soft part. The harder part followed.
"I think that Deontay Wilder is not the right fight for Moses," Price said, "especially now, why would you fight him?"
Price's reasoning lands on the simple fact that Itauma — for all of his talent — has not yet been forced to fight through real adversity in a heavyweight ring. He is 14-0 with 12 stoppages. His March 2026 win over Jermaine Franklin in five rounds was clean and clinical. There is no fight on his record in which he has been hurt, dropped or seriously tested over the championship distance.
"It is not a great fight for Moses at this stage because he has still got that power and he is yet to be in trouble in a fight, Moses," Price said. "I would wait for that."
That is the boxing-coach version of the warning. The underwriter version is that Itauma's chin remains the single biggest open question in his profile, and the fastest way to discover the answer is by walking him into a heavyweight whose right hand has folded peak Tyson Fury and prime Luis Ortiz. Wilder is 40 now, and the residual power he carries is the kind that does not entirely fade.
The alternative path Price is pointing toward is the one Itauma's promoter Frank Warren has already begun to lay out. Itauma has the O2 booked for July 25. His team is openly waiting on the results of two heavyweight title fights — Fabio Wardley vs. Daniel Dubois on May 9 for the WBO belt, and Oleksandr Usyk vs. Rico Verhoeven on May 23 for the WBC strap — before locking in an opponent. The internal preference is to either fight directly for a world title or fight a contender on the path to one.
Wilder, in that framework, is neither of those things. He is a former WBC heavyweight champion, his name still moves PPV numbers, and the symbolism of an Itauma-Wilder fight would be obvious — a generational changing of the heavyweight guard. Price's argument is that the symbolism is exactly the trap.
The wider context is the British boxing landscape. Tyson Fury has just returned to the ring at Tottenham. Anthony Joshua is being maneuvered into a Fury rematch. Both men are firmly in the back end of their primes. Itauma is the alternative heir for British heavyweight boxing, and the path that gets him to the top of the division most efficiently does not, on Price's reading, run through Birmingham, Alabama.
Whether Warren and Itauma's team listen is the next open question. So far, every signal from the camp points to caution. The July 25 O2 date is a marker, not a dare.