It was a night designed for Moses Itauma to shine. But in the end, it was one that illuminated the gaping holes in the 21-year-old’s professional boxing CV.In Itauma’s 14 fights before Saturday night’s dramatic ninth-round loss to Croatian heavyweight Filip Hrgović, he had only twice fought beyond the fifth round, and those bouts came three years ago. In the time since, he has knocked all except one of his opponents out in one or two rounds, the exception being durable American Jermaine Franklin — a man who had not been stopped once in his 26 previous fights.Itauma knocked him out cold midway through the fifth round of their fight in March; a vicious right hand leaving Franklin crashing face-first into the canvas.All of which had left Itauma heralded as the man to fill the sizeable void that will be left when Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua take their millions and run.The fight promotion referred to him simply as “Moses”. His face has adorned the side of London buses. He has a Nike clothing collection in his name, and the entire build-up to Saturday’s fight was framed around the invitation to “witness history”. That could have been a reference to the fact victory would make Hrgović, 34, his country’s first ever heavyweight world champion, but it was more likely a nod to Itauma’s opportunity to become the youngest heavyweight to win a world title since Mike Tyson.Yet, with 33 seconds remaining in the ninth round, Itauma’s trainer Ben Davison threw the towel in and the air was sucked out of all that bluster. The noise around Itauma briefly silenced. As he was carried out of the ring on a stretcher, taken to hospital for checks — drained, exhausted and nursing a leg injury according to his promoter Frank Warren (he was released a few hours later and back home with his family) — the questions started.Was it simply too much too soon? Did he employ the wrong game plan? Is he even that good? Does he have what it takes to be a world champion? Can he come back from a defeat that has exposed, in the most painful way possible, the weak spots in his armour?Moses Itauma contemplates his defeat beside trainer Ben Davison (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)Less than an hour after those dramatic scenes, Warren addressed the media in a windowless room deep in the bowels of the O2 arena and admitted it was too early to know the answer to that final question.“Mentally he’s going to be completely down,” said Warren. “So we’ll have to talk to him and lift him. He’ll take some time out, have a break. It’s not even the time to talk about it with him. It’s something we’ll probably do in maybe two weeks or even a month’s time, to see where we go with it.”The 74-year-old promoter has seen this story play out before.He referenced Amir Khan’s 54-second knockout at the hands of Colombian Breidis Prescott in 2008, when he too was 21 and heralded as British boxing’s great hope after winning an Olympic silver medal in 2004. Less than a year later, Khan had won his first world title.