IBF cruiserweight champion Jai Opetaia expects challenger David Nyika to be cautious as he will not want to get hit when they meet in a 12-round main event this Wednesday, January 8, at the Gold Coast Convention Centre, Broadbeach, Australia. The event will be shown live on DAZN.
Opetaia (26-0, 20 KOs) sparred with the undefeated IBF #10-rated Nyika (10-0, 9 KOs) and feels he won’t want to taste his power. He thinks it will hurt Nyika if he gets involved with anything.
Fight against freezing
Opetaia is believed to have been looking beyond Nyika towards a potential fight against unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, which promoter Eddie Hearn has been talking about. He is also interested in a unification fight with WBA and WBO cruiserweight champion Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez.
Nyika saw what Mairis Briedis did to southpaw Opetaia in their rematch last year and knows he cracks under pressure. He can’t handle it when he starts getting fined, so he gets on his bike and does everything to avoid getting hit.
All of Opetaia’s mystique disappeared in the second half of his rematch with the 39-year-old Briedis on May 18. He couldn’t handle the pressure that the former champion was putting on him.
I wonder what Turki Al-Shiekh was thinking when he looked at Opetaia. He looked like a classic example of a soldier in the combat freeze. Opetaia looked locked down, frozen and mentally paralyzed by the pressure Briedis was putting on him. Turki must have seen what I saw. Opetaia looked like a complete mess. He seemed broken at the end of that fight.
“I am satisfied with all the support. They support me because I keep winning the fights. I continue to perform,” Jai Opetaia told Jai McAllister’s YouTube channel, talking about being supported by Turki Al-Shiekh. “The pressure is great, let’s do it. Like I said, ‘Do or die’.
“I don’t know. I’m interested in how he will come out, how aggressive he will be,” said Opetaia when asked how his fight with Nyika will play out. “I know he doesn’t want to get hit, because I know he’s going to get hurt if I fucking hit him. It will be a chess match. Let’s see how it goes.”
Exploiting weaknesses
Opetaia, 29, now has support, but it could all end if Nyika takes him to Neptune-like Planet 9 in the outer solar system with some of the big shots he’s about to land.
“I never aim lower than the top and Jai is the man right now,” said Nyika Jay McAllister. “Toward the end of the time I sparred with him, I overpowered him more and more. We have made an executive decision to stop working with him because we have received all the information we need.”
It sounds like Nyika figured out Opetaia towards the end of their attacks and probably discovered the key to defeating him. It’s pretty obvious. He doesn’t handle pressure well, and his resume is pretty devoid of quality opposition. He only fought one good guy, Briedis, and that was at the end of his career. A younger version of Briedis would be a nightmare for Opetaia.
“I think he’s trying to blow everything out of the water, and he’s done it pretty well. I’ve seen the guys he’s fought, and none of them had solid or sound game plans,” Nyika said of the many soft guys Opetaia beat.
The quality of the enemy
Knockouts have been fairly easy for Opetaia as he hasn’t fought quality opponents throughout his career, aside from his two fights against Briedis.
Opetaia’s best opponents:
– Mairis Briedis
– Jack Massey
– Ellis Zorro
– Jordan Thompson
– Mark Flanagan
They are not great fighters. The only one you could say was good was Briedis, but he’s past his prime at 39. Any fighter can look good when he’s feasting on the type of opponent Opetaia has fought his entire 10-year pro career.
