Nigerian heritage key to my success - Itauma

Moses Itauma (right) needed less than two minutes to knock out compatriot Dillian Whyte during their WBO Intercontinental heavyweight title fight in August [Getty Images] For Moses Itauma, success in the ring has come quickly. But for the heavyweight prodigy, who only turned 21 in December, the search for identity lasted longer. That is until a trip towards the end of last year to Nigeria, his father's homeland, where he realised the importance of his African heritage.

"This isn't just my boxing, this is kind of my personal life," he told BBC Sport Africa shortly after the visit to Akwa Ibom state in the south-east of the country. "Some of the questions that I want to be answered are in my dad's village. Why am I this type of way?

Why do I look this type of way? Or why do I think this type of way? " While Itauma fights under a British flag, he has a Slovakian mother and was also born in the East European nation.

He has previously talked about the racist abuse he and his family suffered there when he was a child. As he prepares for his delayed fight against American Jermaine Franklin in Manchester on 28 March, he says his first trip to Nigeria in well over a decade gave him a sense of belonging which he finds hard to fully articulate. "I don't know how to describe it.