Jai Opetaia predicts he will “hurt” David Nyika and “put him to sleep” on Wednesday night in their headline show at the Gold Coast Convention Centre, Broadbeach, Australia.
Opeta’s wrath
IBF cruiserweight champion Opetaia (26-0, 20 KOs) left from 1 to 10 on the anger scale when talking about challenger Nyika (10-0, 9 KOs) who had the nerve to say he wants “fight” on Wednesday. I don’t know why Opetaia is so bothered that Nyika believes he will win. The only conclusion I can come to is that it is unsafe.
Opetaia’s eyes went wild and it looked like his blood pressure was boiling. If they had put a blood pressure cuff on him, I would have expected him to be 180/120 at the danger level. One could say that he is not used to his opponents wanting to go to war with him.
Most of them are so scared, but not Nyika. He spotted a weakness in Opetaia and has the power, ring IQ and 6’6″ size to exploit.
Opetaia vs. Nyika will be shown live on DAZN this Wednesday, January 8. This will be Jai’s fourth defense of the IBF cruiserweight title, which he won in 2022.
“Two years ago I didn’t have a crack, and now I’m filling stadiums. It’s a crazy journey I’ve been on,” said Jai Opetaia Stomping Groundtalking about how quickly he became popular.
“We just keep pushing forward. We don’t look back. Any of these guys that are trying to take us off the top, we have to put them in their place, and that’s what I want to do,” Opetaia continued. “I just want to fight. Knock me out. It’s going to be the best dream I’ve had in years since my surgeries,” Jai said of Nyika using sticky notes, speaking of her goal to knock him out.
“I expect a tough fight. He’s a good, creative fighter and he’s smart in that ring. He keeps saying he wants a dogfight. So be it, but he knows. He will have to fight smart. He doesn’t want to be hit. Whatever he puts forward, we have to adapt to it,” said Opetaia.
It could be a tougher fight than Jai expects, and he will have to be 100% ready. Nyika has a blueprint to follow by using the pressing tactics and powerful punches that Mairis Briedis used successfully to make pure hell of Opetaija in their rematch last year on May 18. Jai probably prefers to forget about that fight, but Nyika. He uses it for learning purposes and will try to repeat and improve the Latvian’s success.
“Sleep” guarantee.
“He is highly orthodox. He has a strange style, but he uses it well. We can cut it. I can fucking hurt this guy. He keeps talking about dog fighting, but if I hit him, he’ll fall asleep, I guarantee it. So how many dogfights does he want to have?” Opetaia said.
Nyika could surprise Opetai with his strength and the dog he has in him as he comes to turn this fight into a real war on Wednesday night. Opetaia is a bigger version of Dmitri Bivolo and he doesn’t like it when he has someone who fires back at him. He’s fine while unloading his bombs, but as soon as he returns, he goes into his Buffalo mode.
You can tell that Jai admires former WBA 175lb champion Buffalo, but his fighting style is very similar when attacked. Plus, Opetaia is a different fighter because he’s not a combo puncher like him. Focuses mainly on left hand charging.
We’ve seen it work well for Jai in his recent fights against Jack Massey, Ellis Zorro and Jordan Thompson. None of those guys are major leaguers in the true sense of the word, which is why Opetaia only dominated with his left hand.
Where he couldn’t get over that was his two fights with Mairis Briedis. He got torched by the former champion and took a lot of punishment to his face. Last fight he didn’t look recognizable as Briedis hit him with some punches that turned him into a Halloween mask.
